


Desert Places (A Natural History of Tatooine)

by atamascolily



Series: Inheritance [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Botany, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Field Trip, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Force Trees, Grief/Mourning, Hot Springs & Onsen, Jedi Training, Meditation, Mentor/Protégé, Relationship(s), Talent Shows, Tatooine (Star Wars), Tatooine Ecology, Ysalamiri (Star Wars), popular media in a galaxy far far away, trauma processing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-10-26 00:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 79,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Why is Luke Skywalker embarking on a botanical expedition toTatooine, of all places? Suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of his ordeal on theEye of Palpatineand mourning the loss of two very different women, a mad quest for Force-sensitive trees on his home planet sounds vastly more appealing than another two months of a silent meditation retreat in the Yavin rainy season--even if it does nothing to fix his personal problems.Yet between surprise attacks, evasive maneuvers, and long, drawn-out heart-to-hearts, Luke is surprised to discover that he feels better than he has in a long time.And that's before they even make it to Tatooine.(Fix-it forDarksaberby Kevin J. Anderson, and parts ofChildren of the Jediby Barbara Hambly.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in the [Inheritance 'verse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/971142), which goes AU after the events of the Thrawn trilogy. If you're curious, Luke's previous encounters with the uneti tree on Dagobah are in Chapter Six of [Training Montage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13318815/chapters/30482742) and Chapter Four of [Suicide Run](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929528/chapters/32063004), and his second visit to Ben Kenobi's hut is in [The Circle is Complete](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161276/chapters/30101160).
> 
> If you're curious how Mara and Corran ended up as teachers at the Jedi Academy on Yavin, how the place ended up as a high-class hot springs resort, what a non-Force sensitive botanist is doing as Luke's mentor, and various other events alluded to in this fic, rest assured that story will be coming eventually. For now, sit back and enjoy the ride!
> 
> The subtitle comes from the working title of the fic, an unedited form of which is [serialized on my tumblr](https://atamascolily.tumblr.com/tagged/a-natural-history-of-tatooine). It's worth a look if you're interested in finding out what happens before I post the chapters to A03. 
> 
> The finished title of the fic is taken from Robert Frost's poem of the same name, which Tor quotes from towards the end of the chapter. See note at the end for other quotations and allusions.

Luke Skywalker knew he should try to find the source of the water oozing through cracks in the stone wall of his office, but couldn't summon the energy to investigate. Despite the valiant efforts of the wheezing dehumidifier in the corner, the air was thick and heavy with moisture, transforming every movement into an effort. Through the window, conditions outside were even worse: rain pounded against the stone walls of the ancient temple in an endless, steady drone. Walking was impossible in such weather--more like upright swimming, he thought.

It was the wet season on Yavin IV, which meant it was always raining and everything was perpetually damp, including everything that needed to stay dry to function properly. This was why he scheduled an extended meditation retreat for his Jedi students during this part of the year, sitting together in silence for hour after endless hour and listening to the rain. Unlike Luke's own training sessions on the swamp planet Dagobah, extended runs through the rain afterwards were mostly optional, and surprisingly popular among the more aquatic or athletic types.

Luke himself had grown up on a desert world where rain was the stuff of myths and legends, or at least ancient geologic history. Dew and condensation were as exciting as it got when it came to water on Tatooine, and all too rare at that. One reason he'd chosen Yavin IV as the site for the new Jedi academy was for its clearly defined seasons and an abundance of natural rainfall and life. He'd thought at the time that he he would never tire of lush greenery and endless moisture--but this particular season was pushing him to his limits.

Right now, it was the work period, a two-hour chunk in between meditation sessions reserved for daily chores and other business needed to keep the academy functioning at a bare-bones level. He was supposed to be working, but his heart wasn't in it, and he'd spent the last hour going through the motions without actually accomplishing anything. He sat at the desk in his office and stared at the open datapad and the mountain of electronic correspondence, all of which competed for his attention with varying degrees of urgency. None of it appealed to him.

Not for the first time, he wished Mara was here. She had skipped out of the practice period at the last minute to accompany Kyp and Cilghal on their first errantry. He understood why she'd gone--she tolerated meditation, but preferred action over stillness--but he couldn't help but wish he had gone with her. Though given what had happened before she left, some time apart could only clear the air--

"'Can't go on, everything I know is gone, stormy weather,'" Tor sang as she opened the door and strolled in without bothering to knock. As far as Luke could tell, she didn't believe in knocking. "'Since my love and I ain't together, it's rainin' all the tiiiiiiime.'" She drew the last word out in an exaggerated melodic slur as she perched on the edge of his desk, swatting the datapad out of her way to force him to meet her gaze. She was tall for a human, taller than he was, so she had to duck her head to get at his level, and her grey coveralls were damp, like everything else on this moon, smearing globules of mud all over his workstation. She spent her work periods in the plant nursery off the central courtyard, and it showed.

They were supposed to be observing Noble Silence--no unnecessary conversation or eye contact. He knew she broke it deliberately to get a rise out of him, and he knew she knew he knew that. There was no point in ignoring her in hope she would take the hint and go away, because they both knew she wouldn't.

Fine. If she wanted a response, she'd get one. "I wish you wouldn't do that," he said--rather mildly, under the circumstances.

To her credit, she didn't dance around. "I call it like I see it, Skywalker. You've been moping for weeks, ever since Callista left. I notice. The other instructors notice. The _students_ notice, which is saying something - most of them are so preoccupied with their own problems they wouldn't notice if you put a bantha in a speeder and ran it through the meditation hall." Her lips quirked in a smile at the imaginary spectacle. "Actually, we should try that sometime."

"Please don't."

"'I am like the king of rainy country,'" Tor said, in a sing-song voice, as she got up off the desk and paced back and forth across the office floor, careful to step over the puddle that had formed in a depression in the stonework. He could tell she was quoting something, probably one of the obscure Sawarran poets she was so fond of, translating it into Basic in her head as she went. "'Wealthy, but powerless, young yet old before his time, who grows as weary of his bowing and scraping tutors as he does his pets--'"

"I can't imagine what that's like," Luke said dryly.

"'Nothing can cheer him -- not games, not sports, not even people dying outside his window--'"

"I don't like what you're implying--"

"'The court fool who favors off-color ballads can't distract him from his illness, and his golden bedspread marks a tomb, so that even the court ladies with their risque outfits can't wring a smile from this young skeleton.'"

Now she'd gone too far, but it was easier to let her finish than it was to interrupt. Maybe then she'd leave him alone.

"'No learned alchemist can pluck the poison from his veins, and no hot springs bath can warm this walking corpse, in whose veins flow stagnant water in place of blood.'" She bowed deeply as she finished, gesturing to him. "Behold, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker!"

Luke sighed. He ought to have known this was coming, Noble Silence be damned. "Am I really that bad?"

"Honestly? No. I exaggerate for poetic effect. But you are getting dangerously close. Anger, fear, aggression, moping -- the dark side of the Force are they--"

"Now I know you're talking out of your ass. Who's the Jedi master here, you or me?"

"Well, you're sure as hell not _acting_ like a Jedi master at the moment, so--"

Time to own up and turn her line of reasoning back on her. Luke folded his arm over his chest and met her gaze directly. "All right, I get your point. You're right, I've been stuck in a rut since Callista left. What should I do to change that?"

Her smile lit up her face like a comet. He realized far too late he'd been set up. "How about accompanying me on a botanical expedition to a small desert planet on the Outer Rim called Tatooine?"

Luke stared. Whatever he'd been expecting... this wasn't it. "You can't possibly be serious," he said at last.

"Never been more serious in my life." 

"There aren't any plants on Tatooine worth speaking of. I know. I grew up there, remember?"

"Yes, but you weren't looking in the right places," Tor said, with that absolute confidence that would be obnoxious if she weren't so often right.

"Is this about the uneti trees that you think Ben planted there but actually don't exist?"

"I admit it's a long shot," she agreed. "But I don't believe Kenobi went into exile without some seeds; too much symbolism attached to them. He either planted or cached them somewhere, and I want to find out what happened."

"Tor, I went to Ben's hut ten years ago when I went back to rescue Han from Jabba. I would have _seen_ them if they were there--"

"Were you specifically looking for them?"

"No," he admitted. He'd seen the last living uneti tree while training with Yoda on Dagobah, but he'd never encountered any seeds until a brief visit to the tree after Yoda's death. At the time, he'd been too busy wrestling with his own rage and grief over Ben's duplicity to pay much attention to anything else. 

"Do you have anything to do here on Yavin besides sit around and mope?"

There was a lot to do--too much, really--but the idea of paperwork was exceptionally unappealing. "....No."

"Why not come out with me and see what we can find? Worst case scenario is you have some awkward reunions with childhood friends you haven't seen in decades; best case scenario is that we find what we're looking for. Either way gets you off-planet and distracted for a while."

"Everyone I know back home is dead," Luke said. It was an exaggeration, but only just: Owen, Beru, Ben, and Biggs had all died within days of each other at the hands of the Empire, and he hadn't been particularly close to anyone else.

But Tor was not going to let him wallow in old griefs, either. "Great! So at worse, we'll have a _very boring, completely mediocre_ time."

"Knowing you, I doubt that very much," he said, but she was off the desk and heading for the door before he had finished speaking.

"Grab your things and meet me at the docking bay in an hour," she said, sweeping out of the room as suddenly as she'd arrived.

Outside, the rain continued to pound. Water dripped from the stone walls and the puddle on the floor grew deeper. Everything was humid and damp, and it wouldn't stop raining for at least another month.

He sighed. What the hell. He was a fool for letting her rope him into her crazy scheme, but he needed to get away from the academy for a while, away from the maddening, endless rain. Even if she was completely wrong about the trees, she'd gotten one thing right: he didn't have anything left to lose.

He retrieved his pad the floor. In a fit of inspiration, he composed a message to Kam and Tionne that managed to be truthful and misleading in equal measures, informing them he'd been called away with Tor on urgent business. The two Solustars were in charge of the Academy until his return.

Then he closed the pad, got up from his desk, remembered just in time to step over the murky puddle by the door, and went to pack.

***

He didn't need much - a few robes, a spare canteen, and his lightsaber sufficed, since Tor's ship was well-stocked with ration bars and other tools. The direct route to the old Rebel docking bay on the lower level had flooded, entailing a cumbersome detour up and around the blocked passageway. On the way through the subbasement, he ran into Aerial, his attendant, who was responsible for scheduling one on one meetings between him and the students during the practice period.

Aerial, a shy, skinny Rodian with even bigger ears than typical for her species, bowed her head, careful to avoid eye contact in keeping with the custom. "Master Skywalker, a moment, if you would--"

"Cancel all of my appointments, Aerial. I have been called away on urgent business and I don't know when I will return."

"Ah--" Aerial squeaked in acknowledgement, bowing again in surprise and confusion. As he pushed past her, she dug a pad out of the sleeves of her brown robe and scribbled furiously.

He felt a pang at Aerial's obvious distress, but couldn't summon the energy to say or do any more. She was still very nervous around him--watched too many holos with Luke Skywalker the Hero, he suspected. He'd hoped that serving as his personal assistant for the practice period would help her relax, but it was an uphill battle. Something else to deal with when he finished with Tor's mad venture in the desert, no doubt.

Thankfully, he made it to the docking bay without any more interruptions. Tor had given him an hour, but he wasn't surprised to find her already there and waiting for him next to her ship, the sleek Sawarran pleasure cruiser, _Appointment with Destiny_.

Compared to the massive fleets produced by Kuat Drive or Sluis Van, or even Mon Calamari, Sawarra produced relatively few ships--more expensive, but far more beautiful than their counterparts in other systems. Luke had cut his teeth on Incom T-65 X-wing starfighters, first for the Rebellion and briefly for the New Republic, but he had to admit that the the only ships to rival the luxury Sawarran cruisers were the Battle Dragon warships of the Hapes Consortium. Unlike the massive Hapan ships, the Sawarran preferred smaller and more subtle ships, not much bigger than Corellian light freighters like the _Millennium Falcon_ , but far more sinuous and curved. Sawarran ships were modeled off native plant and animal species; the _Destiny_ mimicked the curves and motions of the reigar carp, a freshwater fish that massed in the headwaters every fall to mate and die in huge numbers across the system's three habitable planets.

Tor had never revealed how an academic botanist with a checkered past had come to own a ship as fine as _Destiny_. She deflected any curiosity by muttering something about an old debt from the smuggler Talon Karrde and stonewalling until he changed the subject. Maybe someday, if he was lucky, he'd learn the story, but for now it remained one of the many mysteries surrounding her.

"I hear rumors you were a great pilot back in the day, so you can fly us out," she said, by way of greeting. "I've already set course on the navicomputer, so all you have to do is get us out of atmosphere. Meet me in the conservatory once you make the jump to lightspeed, and we'll take a look at the maps together."

Luke nodded. He hadn't flown anything since the start of the rainy season, which might account for some of his poor mood recently. Taking the _Destiny_ into orbit under current atmospheric conditions would be annoying, but nothing he couldn't handle. Either Tor was serious about her promise to distract him or she knew how much he'd missed flying. Probably both, he decided.

"Don't worry, I've already taken care of all the permits," Tor said, striding up the open gangplank.

"What?" Luke said, unsure he'd heard correctly, and fearing he had.

"Just get us into hyperspace and I'll show you everything," she said, not even bothering to turn around.

With another sigh, he followed her up into the _Destiny_ , careful to close the hatch door behind him. They hadn't even left the academy and he had no idea what her plan was, but he was too relieved to have a direction--any direction--to care.

***

It was his first time flying the _Destiny_ , but the controls didn't deviate much from the industry standards and she handled well enough to give even a hot-rodded hunk of junk like the _Millennium Falcon_ a run for her money. It was a relief to punch through the clouds and leave the rain behind, hurtling into the shining vacuum of space with stars in every direction and the glowing red sphere of the gas giant Yavin off to one side.

Like the reitar carp, the pilot's chair was in the front of the ship, where the face and brain would be on a real animal. The midsection contained the common area and various smaller living quarters, and the weapons and life support were at the back with the "tail". Unlike most spaceships, which boasted sleek and shiny metallic and duraplast interiors, Tor had converted the common area of the ship into a conservatory with a spectacular view of the heavens in every direction, with a carefully curated plant collection that rivaled the jungles of Yavin IV for diversity and humidity. Unlike Yavin, however, the "rain" was thankfully mild and only happened at night.

"What's this about permits?" Luke said, striding into the greenhouse after maneuvering the _Destiny_ into hyperspace. Tor's one concession to standard shipboard amenities in the conservatory was a gaming table at its center, which she had converted to a high-quality holo display. "Regardless of the laws on the books, nobody on Tatooine bothers with permits. That's a Core thing."

Sitting on a bench at the holo table, Tor grinned and passed him a handful of papers. "These should do nicely, then."

Luke stared. On the first sheet, Tor had written 'I do what I want' in crude, but understandable Huttese. The second said, 'What are you going to do about it?' and the third read 'Don't even bother trying to stop me'. The document certainly _looked_ official, but he doubted it would hold up to the slightest scrutiny of any customs agents they encountered. He had to admit the ornate calligraphy was a nice touch, though.

"You think these will help?" Luke asked, passing the papers back to her.

"In conjunction with some hefty bribes? I think we'll be fine. I try to avoid outright duplicity, but sometimes a timely application of moneys can be very helpful, you know?"

"Who do you plan on bribing?" Luke asked, settling down on the other side of the holo-table next to a massive and spiky bromeliad. The razor-sharp edges of the leaves were covered with epiphytes and small colorful amphibians cavorted in the leaflitter.

"Anyone who needs it," Tor said with a shrug. "It's less messy than shooting, but with more opportunities for a double-cross. There are trade-offs to everything."

Luke thought about his brief time in Mos Eisley, with its sweat and dust and low-level crime--far more violent compared to the slow, grinding poverty of the isolated farming community where he'd grown up--and didn't argue. She was probably right. Obi-wan had dubbed the place "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" on their visit together over a decade ago. He doubted the city had improved since his last visit.

Growing up, he'd never felt much fondness for his home planet, as he slogged through the heat and the endless hours of toil, always dreaming of better things beyond the horizon. He'd left without a backward glance after his aunt and uncle were slaughtered on the doorstep of his childhood home by Imperial agents. His best friend Biggs had died a few days later in battle against the first Death Star, and Luke had never stopped moving for after that. Only in the last few years at Yavin had he settled down, and even then, his life had been punctuated by adventures elsewhere.

He'd come back briefly to Tatooine to rescue Han from local despot Jabba the Hutt, but had spent less than a week on the planet's surface. They'd left as soon heist was over, and there'd been too much going on--first at Endor and then with the New Republic and the Jedi Academy--for him to care about what happened on some sandy dustball in the Outer Rim. He hadn't thought about

No doubt Jabba's death had left a temporary power vacuum that other criminals had rushed to fill, effectively maintaining the status quo. No doubt the moisture farmers still eked out a living as best they could on their isolated holdings, the Sand People roamed and raided at sporadic intervals, the Jawas traders circuited the dunes in their massive sandcrawlers, and Mos Eisley--was still scummy, rundown and desperate little backwater spaceport. Just like always.

The only thing that was different now was there was no Imperial presence in the system. But it was highly unlikely any of the New Republic's reforms had reached this far out into the Rim, given how many crises had come up in the last few years.

"This is your show, I'm just along for the ride," he said aloud. "And to keep you from getting into too much trouble. Bribes and permits can only get you so far in this place."

"Believe me, I wouldn't have it any other way," Tor agreed.

She brought up an intricate, detailed 3-D model of the Tatooine system on the holo display. A single planet, flanked by three ragged moons, orbited a pair of shining yellow stars, flaring bright in the holo display until Tor adjusted the levels to a more tolerable gleam.

"As you can see, the three moons would make for incredibly complex tides if there were any surface water, but the planet is close enough to the binary stars that that doesn't exist. The moons do account for significant fluxes in atmospheric moisture, though, which probably caused your aunt and uncle no end of headaches," Tor said, settling into lecture mode.

"Tatooine was initially settled in the later years of the Old Republic by humans eager to exploit its alleged mineral wealth, but all of the established colonies quickly went bust after an initial boom, resulting in generations of poverty for the surviving settlers. The Hutts quickly took advantage of the decline, purchasing massive amounts of territory and property--including sentient beings--and initiating a sharecropping system for those unable to pay their debts. However, free farming enclaves, populated by the descendants of the original human colonists, still remain--"

"Can you get to the point? I already know this," Luke said.

She leaned forward, zooming the display to focus on Tatooine itself. "How much planetary geography did you study?"

"Uhhhmm, very little," he admitted. "I knew the area where I grew up like the back of my hand, but mostly I focused on star charts and atmospheric conditions. You know, pilot stuff." _So I could get out of there,_ he thought, but didn't say.

"Can you plot the coordinates of your childhood farm on this map?"

Luke nodded. Those coordinates were one of the first things he'd had to learn before Uncle Owen would let him go out alone in his T-16 Skyhopper: how to get back home, even with a damaged navcomputer, and only one engine functioning. He still had them memorized. Some things, once engrained, never left.

Tor punched in the numbers he recited and zoomed in still further on a map derived from the most recent planetary survey - from the Imperial era, Luke noted, a few years before the farm had been destroyed. The familiar white structures of the farm's outbuildings were still visible in the holo. He felt his throat tighten at this eerie glimpse into the lost past.

"Your moisture farm was located in an ancient lake bed," Tor said, studying the image. "Millions of years ago, massive amounts of water flowed in--and never flowed out. As the climate grew warmer, the water evaporated over time, leaving the salts it carried behind."

"Uh, whatever you say," Luke said, still unnerved by the intact farm buildings in the holo. "We called it the Great Chott."

She clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "Not very conducive to plant life, as you observed earlier. And any vegetation would be very conspicuous; there's no shelter here at all from sandstorms or unwanted attention. I think we'll have to look elsewhere for the trees. Tell me about this place," she said, pointing to a vast stretch of sand to the northeast of the Lars' farm.

"Ah, that's the Dune Sea--" He told her about building a small hang-glider the winter he was twelve, and launching himself off the tops of the largest dunes to catch the thermal updrafts and soar for hours, until he lost the air current and crashed, giggling, into the shifting sands. "That was the first time I ever flew," he said, smiling at the memory, "and I could never get enough of it after that."

"What about here?" she said, pointing to a different spot on the map. This marked the ruins of a failed mining operation that Luke and Biggs had explored when they were fifteen and convinced of their own immortality. Not even flushing up a massive colony of womp rats had dampened their spirits.

He showed her the Darklighter farm, where Biggs had lived until he'd left for the Imperial Academy, and Anchorhead, where he'd gone with Owen and Beru to pick up any supplies that couldn't be easily shipped to Tosche Station. He showed her the station general store, the abandoned dune hut where he'd hung out with his agemates during poor weather, Old Lady Whittaker's place on the outskirts, the Marstrap family greenhouse and Fixer's machine shop.

He told her about his family's infrequent trips to Bestine, which had become the de facto center of Imperial power on the planet, leaving Mos Eisley under the rule of the kleptocratic Hutt crime syndicates. He told her about sifting through the algae tanks on the farm to gather greens for dinner; how Beru had splurged and bought him his first fresh fruit, a wik'u melon, when he was four years old, and it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He told her about the informal races through Beggar's Canyon, where every heartbeat counted in the quest to reach the finish line, how the day he'd threaded the Stone Needle and shaved a few seconds off his time still counted as one of the best days of his life. He lost his stabilizers in the process and it was a rough and bumpy ride back, but it had been worth every jolt on the way home.

He told her about fetch fetch, or dry quicksand that could snag an unwary traveler on foot, and fulgurites, glassy chunks of sand fused together by ancient lightning strikes. He told her about the drum sand, that vibrated when stirred by the wind, causing eerie echoes that the Jawas claimed were the voice of ghosts, and glow sand, which radiated at night with mysterious phosphorescence and no one knew why. He told her about the characteristic ripples the wind formed in sand, and how they varied depending on the composition and consistency of the dunes, how there was always sand in his clothing, in his mouth, dust everywhere, and he'd never known it could be otherwise until he went away with Ben into space.

As he'd half-expected, she was most interested in his tales of the Jundland Wastes, which was not an area he'd spent much time in. He told her as much as he could remember from following an escaped Artoo-Detoo into the rocky canyons--only to be ambushed by Tuskens and rescued by Ben Kenobi's krayt dragon call. Tor was intrigued by this particular detail, and made Luke imitate the sound several times before she let the matter drop.

"Ben said the Jundland Wastes were not to be traveled lightly--I think that was one of the few things he and my uncle agreed on," Luke said thoughtfully.

This segued nicely into Tor's next line of inquiry: the location of Ben Kenobi's hut.

That was a harder question to answer. He'd only been there twice--one in a dazed rush with Ben, after he'd been knocked unconscious in that Tusken ambush, and once alone, guided by the Force. None of those trips translated into working coordinates, however.

Rather than panic, he let his hands relax and wander over the landscape until he found a location that _felt_ right. "Here," he said, and tapped it. A geomarker appeared as the holo zoomed in on the distinctive outline of the hut, and Tor saved it.

"Good," she said. "Very good. You've told me quite a lot, Skywalker, whether you realize it or not."

"What are you going to with all this?" Luke asked curiously. She'd spent decades as a field botanist--first on Sawarra, then throughout the galaxy--and it was clear there was method to her madness, even if the details were beyond him.

"I like to know the lay of the land before I come out of orbit. I already had a good idea of where to start looking based on the map data alone, but what you've told me now has confirmed my initial impressions."

"Huh." This was not an approach he'd ever thought to take. "If you already think you know where the trees are, why ask for my help?"

Tor smiled. "Because I might be wrong, of course. Maps are wonderful tools, but in my business, there's no substitute for ground-truthing, as we call it. A lot can change in twenty years, but I trust your memory. And sometimes maps lie."

"Who would alter a map out _here_?" Luke asked. "This planet is a wasteland, there hasn't been any mining for centuries--"

"Someone who didn't want to be found. It's what I would have done in their place."

She didn't say Ben's name as she shut off the holo, but she didn't have to. Luke had seen Ben befuddle the minds of stormtroopers at an Imperial checkpoint once. He had no doubt that Ben could have altered the official maps and records to cover his tracks.

Tor must have seen the distracted look on Luke's face that indicated his thoughts were wandering, because she started quoting poetry again. "'They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home, to scare myself with my own desert places.'

"Good night, Skywalker," she said, and left him alone in the conservatory with his thoughts.

***

It was only later, as he sprawled back in his bunk in the _Destiny_ 's spare quarters that he realized he'd been so absorbed with Tor's questions that he hadn't thought about Callista once. Or Mara, for that matter.

No doubt that had been Tor's plan all along.

***

_"Cray!"_

_His head throbbed, matching the burning pain that threaded through his infected leg. He was barely able to walk, but he had to keep going. Cray was in trouble. She would die if he didn't do something. Where was she?_

_He heard a scream behind him, saw Cray stumbling forward as a series of half-dressed Gamorreans in stormtrooper uniforms pushed her along. Two others half-carried, half-dragged Nichos's android body, still twitching feverishly from his attempt to jack into the_ Eye of Palpatine's _systems and subvert the Will. There was a set of blast doors between them and Luke, closing fast._

_He lunged, knowing even as he did so he couldn't move fast enough to make it in time._

_"CRAY!"_

He woke, gasping and sweating, sprawled in a tangle on his bunk.

 _It was just a dream,_ he told himself, his racing heart gradually slowing as he reoriented himself to his surroundings. He was on a ship, but it wasn't the _Eye of Palpatine_ , it was Tor's ship and he was safe now. Everything was fine.

Of course, being a Jedi, Luke's dreams had a tendency to be prophetic, little glimpses of futures that might or might not come to pass. But this nightmare was no future vision, but a memory of the past--

The chronometer on the wall said it was 0630 shipboard time, wildly out of sync with the Yavin day, but he didn't think he could get back to sleep after that. He threw on a fresh set of robes, and padded out into the conservatory and gazed up at the streaming stars as the ship hurtled through hyperspace. The artificial lights were set low and would gradually increase their output over time to imitate a natural sunrise. Tor also had programmed a series of birdcalls to mimic the dawn chorus - though like the plants themselves, the recording boasted an odd mixture of planets and ecosystems that would never occur in nature. Yavin fairy-peacocks competed Sawarran nighthawks in exuberance, followed shortly thereafter by a whole flock of Coruscanti tower doves and Corellian falcons.

Tor sat on a cushion on the floor, her legs folded and her eyes half-closed in meditation with an emerald green silk envelope resting in her lap. There was an empty cushion off to one side, and without a word he settled down beside her.

He thought he saw the faintest flicker of a smile flash across her face, but any expression passed too quickly for him to be certain of it. The presence of her mind was still and calm and unreadable as always, reflecting back at him like water in a tranquil pool. Luke's thoughts, agitated and unsettled from his dream, began to settle out, like oil and water in a jar no longer shaken. His breathing slowed and deepened as they sat together in silence.

After about thirty minutes, the cries of the birds rose to a crescendo and faded away as the "sun" rose around them. A bell rang, so high-pitched and pealing Luke thought it was another bird before he recognized the sound. Tor reached down to pick up the silk envelope, and balanced it on her head before lowering her hands up to her heart and pressed her palms together. Out of long habit, Luke mimicked the last gesture. Together they chanted:

 _"Vast is the power of the Force,_  
_A formless field of benefaction,_  
_I renew my ceaseless vows_  
_To be good and kind for the benefit of all beings_."

Tor took the cloth envelope off her head, and pulled out what looked like a woven cloth bib with a wooden ring tucked in one of the upper corners and put it around her neck. This was her rakusu, a miniature version of an ordained priest's robe on Sawarra, a garmet also worn by dedicated lay practitioners like herself. Unlike the blue, black, or brown of traditional rakusus, the fabric was dyed a deep living green, mirroring the jungle plants around them.

Although not officially a priest, Tor had spent over a decade in an isolated monastery in the wild Sawarran mountains in hiding from the ruling junta, which had taken a very dim view of any anti-Imperial opinions following Palpatine's rise to power. Hunted by the authorities, she had taken sanctuary in the monastery, going literally underground whenever soldiers dropped in for a visit.

Over the years, she'd grown close to the wily old abbot of Akkan-ji, and become one of his most trusted students. A few days before his death, he'd formally ordained Tor as one of his teaching heirs, a gift that had never been offered before to a lay student--let alone a woman. The abbot's decision upset many of the more conservative hard-liners in the monastery hierarchy and they'd taken their revenge by leaking her existence to the military. Tor had been forced into exile, unable to return home under after the fall of the Empire. Despite the pain her ordination had caused her, she took her responsibilities to her teacher seriously, and wore her rakusu with pride--though it was usually tucked under her coveralls and rarely visible in public.

Inspired by his time at the Sawarran monasteries after their first meeting, Luke had adopted some of the chants to close out morning meditation sessions at the Jedi academy. Watching her now, he wondered if he should modify the custom yet further to include the rakusu as well. Traditionally, a Jedi's rite of passage was constructing their own lightsaber--but he'd discovered that many of his students still viewed the instrument as a weapon of power and war, injuring themselves and others in the process. Perhaps adding a less martial component -- like asking students to sew their own robes by hand, as the Sawarran priests did - might go a long way towards correcting that misconception.

Luke sighed. For a thousand generations, the old Jedi order had been passed down in an unbroken line of succession from master to student, only to be scattered and nearly destroyed in the Empire's rise to power. He and his fellow instructors at the academy were doing their best to restore the order--but times had changed and they'd also made adjustments where they felt necessary and appropriate, rather than slavishly following the old ways.

In addition to lightsaber constructions and trials as rites of passage, they had also been experimenting with the practice of first errantry, in which one or two recent graduates would go on missions, accompanied by a more seasoned practitioner to offer corrections in the field. Mara, in particular, had been especially vehement about this practice, which was one reason why she was off with Kyp and Cilghal--two very different students she had taken under her wing for vastly different reasons--instead of on Yavin for the rainy season retreat.

First errantry was why Luke had taken Cray and Nichos with him to Ithor six months ago--where they'd stumbled upon an odd message that had led them straight to the Moonflower Nebula and no end of trouble--

Tor rose, and Luke did the same, stowing their cushions under the seats around the holo-display, which was set this morning to mimic a bubbling fountain. Were they back at the Academy, it would be time to for temple cleaning, but Luke wasn't sure what, if anything, needed to be done aboard ship until Tor gestured him towards a broom and a dustpan tucked away in the corner.

He set to work sweeping the floor, while she circled the room, checking in on her plants and harvesting fruit or leaves for the morning meal. Tor was a purist about "real food," as she called it. She tolerated standard shipboard fare like ration bars and vacuum-sealed processed meals for fieldwork, but preferred her meals fresh and green whenever possible.

By the time Luke had finished sweeping and was casting about for a new task, Tor had assembled two trays loaded with fruits, vegetables, and nuts--only some of which he recognized--and steaming mugs of cha, the Sawarran national beverage. Tor was such an addict, she'd amassed an impressive collection of cha plants aboard the _Destiny_ and an even larger one in her garden on Yavin so she would never be deprived of a fresh cup. The taste was bitter and grassy compared to hot chocolate, but Luke had gradually come to appreciate it during his time on Sawarra, where he and Tor had spent many hours bent over a large pot, engrossed in discussion over Jedi minutiae.

She switched off the holo-table, revealing the flat surface underneath, and Luke helped her carry the trays over. Only once they were both sitting down, and finished offering thanks for their food, did they meet each other's gaze.

"Good morning," said Tor. "Did you sleep well?"

"Not really," he said, digging into what he thought was a breadnut, although he had never seen one in such a violent shade of pink.

"A special hybrid," Tor said, in response to the surprise that flashed across his face. "Extra anthocyanins, supposed to be very good for you. Tastier, too."

"I guess." He couldn't detect any difference, but he wasn't going to argue with her.

"Don't look so downcast. I have lots of fat nijki larvae that are ready for harvest that I didn't include because I know they make you squeamish."

Luke grimaced, and took a sip of cha. "We ate mealworms all the time on Tatooine, but they were dried, roasted, and ground into flour, not alive and wriggling--"

"That's how you know they're _fresh_ ," Tor protested, but this was an old dispute that she frequently exaggerated for comic effect. "So what did you dream about this time? Any future dangers I should know about?"

He hadn't expected her to segue back to the subject of his dreams, at least not so _fast_. "No, just old screw-ups," he said.

She looked at him, waiting for him to say more, but he bent into his breakfast and ignored her. The silence stretched out between them for another ten minutes before he finally gave in and answered her.

"You don't have to say it," he said. "It was a stupid thing for me to do, to go off to investigate some unknown evil with just two droids and a scientist for company."

Tor raised an eyebrow and coughed loudly. "Depends on the scientist, of course."

"Err--right," he said, aware that he might have insulted her. Thankfully, she seemed more amused by his faux pas than anything else. Tor might be a professional botanist, but she had studied martial arts for years at Akkan-ji, and she was far from helpless in battle. "Cray wasn't a warrior, and neither were Nichos and Threepio--and once I got injured, things went downhill <i>fast</i>\--"

"So you didn't stop and think when you found a problem to investigate. Who would you have taken with you instead, given the choice?"

"I mean--hell, anyone, really. Kyp--Kam--Corran. Even Cilghal, I could have used her healing skills out there--"

"Mara," said Tor softly.

He sighed. "Yes, I should have taken Mara. Though--it would have been hard on her, the Imperial conditioning, especially after what happened to her in the Core. She might have gone over this time and not come back." He fingered the place where the cerebral feed had been jacked into his skull, pumping him with chemicals and memories not his own, in an automated effort to convert him to the Imperial cause. Cilghal had healed everything so well there was no trace of a scar.

He almost wished there was. Without it, it was far too easy to believe he'd imagined the whole ordeal.

Though imagining the experience of being trapped on a massive Imperial dreadnaught torn apart from the inside out by warring factions of confused aliens picked up in lieu of long-lost stormtrooper garrisons scattered across the galaxy, fighting the ship's rigid automated programming while coping with injuries that would have killed an ordinary person would have been preferable to the actuality.

"But you had Callista," Tor said. "Surely that counted for something."

Luke buried his face in his hands, and pushed his tray away. He couldn't deal with this level of emotion during breakfast. He didn't want to think about Callista.

Or Cray and Nichos, who hadn't made it off the _Eye of Palpatine_ alive.

Cray, who had been captured and tortured by the ship's brainwashed inhabitants before she'd sacrificed her spirit to save Callista. She'd offered the fallen Jedi her body as a new home.

Nichos, who in one sense had died long before Cray had implanted his consciousness in a droid body, but couldn't bear to continue existing without her.

Tor thrust the tray back at him. "Drink your cha, Skywalker. There's been enough silence. A whole month of it. Now it's time to talk."

He drank the cha on autopilot, unable to meet her gaze. He didn't know what there was to say, what he could say. Any words he could think of were hopelessly inadequate.

Everything was all tangled up inside his head. Callista. Mara. Cray. Nichos. He didn't even know where to start.

He wished Tor would leave him alone, let him suffer in peace. Everyone else had.

His students twittered to each other in awe about his prowess as a Jedi. He heard the whispers, saw the wonder in their eyes as he passed. They mourned Cray and Nichos, but accepted their deaths as a necessary sacrifice to prevent a holocaust. Tionne had even made a ballad about it. Cilghal had healed Luke's wounds, but even the talented Mon Calamari ex-ambassador could do nothing for his head--or his heart. Leia and Han hadn't pushed him, trusting he would open when the time was right and not a moment before--and they busy enough with their own lives as it was.

Up until the start of the practice period, Tor had been away on fieldwork. Then Callista had walked away. So had Mara.

(Mara's departure was all his fault. She wouldn't have left if he'd been open to her. If he hadn't--)

"I despise self-pity, Skywalker. Didn't your teachers ever warn you that leads to the Dark Side, too?"

"They never told me a lot of things." He didn't want to be here, didn't want any of this, but she wasn't going to let him slip away quietly and there was nowhere else to hide. A flush of anger stirred in him. She didn't have the Force. She was strong enough and self-aware enough that he couldn't manipulate her mind, but there were other ways to push her away, fling her back across the conservatory and away from him--

"It's fine to love them both, you know," Tor said.

Any anger he'd felt deflated instantly. She'd exposed him. She'd said it out loud. She knew everything.

Did everyone else know, too?

"Not everyone knows," Tor said. As she had pointed out on numerous occasions, you didn't need the Force to tell what someone was thinking--just a good eye and a decent understanding of human nature. "Like I said before, the students are preoccupied with their own concerns. The others know that you're upset, but they don't know why--they think it's grief over Cray and Nichos's deaths or a side effect of considerable head trauma you suffered."

His voice was dry and ragged in his throat. "That's part of it."

"Of course it is," Tor said. "But all your physical wounds have healed. You spent several weeks in a healing trance and a bacta tank in addition to all of Cilghal's ministrations. As for Cray and Nichos--I'm sorry. I miss them, too. But they're not the reason why you're stuck in this slough of despond, and it's misleading to pretend otherwise."

Yes. That was true. He'd grieved at his students' deaths, but he'd been overjoyed to learn upon waking that Callista had survived--even if she inhabited Cray's body now. It had been eerie for the students who had known Cray, to see someone else's spirit inhabiting her flesh; it was even odder for Luke, since Cray had been his student and Callista--was his lover.

Prior to his ordeal on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , he'd had long discussions with Mara and the other instructors about the dangers of fraternizing with students. Even under the extenuating circumstances, it was still--awkward, to say the least.

He'd missed Mara on that trip, wished she had been there to help him. But he'd come to love Callista during that awful week trapped on board the _Eye of Palpatine_. Her sense of humor. Her laughter.

He'd thought he was going to die anyway, so why the hell not fall in love with her? Why deny himself what comforts she offered him? Why not fantasize a different, impossible future together to stave off the despair--

And then Cray, Nichos, and Callista has tricked him, knocking him unconscious and ejecting him in a shuttle with the other refugees to keep him from interfering with their plan to blow up the dreadnought and destroy Callista entirely. It was only after the explosion, after he'd mourned and grieved their loss, that he saw the escape pod and dared to hope that one of them, at least, had survived.

As soon as he saw who lay inside, he knew, though the only thing that had changed in Cray's face were her eyes. They were no longer a shining blue, but a watery, pale grey, the same grey he'd seen in his Force visions of Callista's spirit, and in those dreams-that-were-more-than-dreams they had shared aboard the dreadnought.

Due to a series of complicated events he had failed to grasp the significance of at the time, Mara had been the one to rescue them both. "Awkward" didn't even begin to cover it.

So the tension that crackled between the three of them like Force lightning that bounced endlessly from object to object because it could never find anywhere to safely ground. That had been one problem. The other was that somewhere in the crossing from the <i>Eye of Palpatine</i>'s computer into Cray's body, Callista had lost her ability to touch and feel the Force.

This was not, in itself, a problem, at least from Luke's point of view. Despite the occasional complications, Luke had decided long ago it was better for his students to mingle with other folk, lest they grow arrogant and decide their power with the Force made them inherently superior beings. A Jedi was called to serve others, not be their master. Depending on the time of year, there were plenty of non-Force sensitive people in or around the Academy grounds.

Tor wasn't Force-sensitive, and neither were most of the graduate students she brought with her on field expeditions during the Yavin dry season. Four months out of the year, the academy also accepted reservations from guests wealthy or intrigued enough to soak in a hot springs surrounded by the fabled Jedi, the vast majority of whom had no aptitude or interest in the Force at all. Luke wasn't sure how one could be indifferent to levitating rocks or buzzing lightsabers, but many of their patrons didn't even blink an eye--or the equivalent visual organ--at these and other manifestations of powers.

But it had been hard for Callista, used to the Old Order and the older ways. The Force had been a presence throughout her life, from her birth on the wild ocean planet of Chad, up until the moment she'd died on the _Eye of Palpatine_ thirty years earlier. The Force was what had sustained her in the gunnery core all these years, and allowed her to cross over into Cray's body.

The Force had defined Callista's entire life. Of course, she missed it. To have it gone now was like being blind or deaf after a lifetime with sight and hearing. Luke knew what it was like to be without the Force after an extended stay on the planet of Myrkr, with its Force-oblivating ysalamiri, and the idea of spending the rest of his life that way, after everything he had experienced-- was unbearable.

 _"It isn’t the Force in you that I love,"_ he'd said when she'd awoken in Cray's body, attempting to reassure her, kissing her. _"It's you."_

But that hadn't been enough, hadn't been enough to keep her there, to make her stay with him--

 _Stop_ , he told himself. _Tor's right. You're skirting dangerously close to the Dark Side. Love is fine, but attachment to fixed outcomes, wanting things to be different from what they are, self-clinging--are not the right path. Stop. Stop._

But even though he knew it was wrong, he couldn't seem to stop himself from brooding.

_"I love you, Luke," she'd said. "But...it’s not going to be easy. But I think...I feel that we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time."_

_"We have time," he'd said. "There’s no hurry. But there is—and there always will be—my love for you."_

He was such a fool.

He was aware that Tor was still watching him with that implacable calm gaze. At times like this, it was hard not to envy her equanimity.

"I don't even know where to start," he said aloud.

"The poets say the entry point is where you are," Tor said. "So pick anywhere, and begin."

He took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "I thought things would be easier when we returned to Yavin, but as it turns out, I was wrong. So much for the myth of Jedi infallibility."

What had Callista said to him once, when his courage had failed him on the _Eye of Palpatine_? "My old master, Djinn Altis, once said, 'Every student is obliged to make one thousand eighty major mistakes. The sooner you make them, the sooner you will not have to make them anymore.' I asked him for a list. He said, 'Thinking there's a list is mistake number four.'"

He repeated that anecdote to Tor, knowing it would make her laugh, and it did.

"I like that!" she said. "She never mentioned that one to me. But it sounds like you're well on your way to attaining the magic number already."

"I suppose," Luke said. "And at least no one died because of my mistakes this time. They just--"

"Hurt like hell?"

"Yeah."

"Do tell."


	2. Chapter 2

The _Hunter's Luck_ was a rich kid's yacht from the later days of the Empire that had fallen to pirates before ending up in the fleet of ex-smuggler Talon Karrde. He'd gifted the craft to Mara when she'd taken a leave of absence from his organization to join Luke on Yavin; she hadn't felt comfortable there without a way to escape. Luke couldn't exactly blame her--if he hadn't crashed his X-wing on his arrival at Dagobah, he might have fled rather than stick out his early days of Jedi training with Yoda.

Still, the _Luck_ was the last sight he expected to see when he woke on the shuttle Cray and Nichos had ejected from the _Eye of Palpatine_. With her usual impeccable timing, Mara had arrived just in time to witness the explosion, while remaining safely out of range of any shrapnel.

Still dazed and in shock from his ordeals aboard the dreadnought and grieving over the death of his companions, Luke assumed her ship was another hallucination. Then the tractor beam had engaged and drawn his shuttle over, and Mara Jade stalked through the airlock, demanding to know what was going on, and what he thought he was doing out in the middle of nowhere.

"Why the _hell_ am I the one who always has to rescue you from deep space, Skywalker? Can't you--I don't know--call a towship or something--? And what the hell are you doing here with all these aliens--is that a _Kitonak_ , for kriff's sake--"

Conveniently, Luke passed out again, so he was spared having to come up with answers to satisfy her. The truth was unbelievable enough as it was.

When he woke again a few hours later, he was surprised to find he was still on the _Luck_ with Mara and he hadn't imagined his rescue after all. Threepio had managed to explain at least some of their predicament to Mara, and the two were grumpily working together to make sure that all of the other beings that had been trapped along with them on the dreadnought--many still under Imperial indoctrination--would be safely returned to their home planets.

Unexpectedly, Han, Leia and Chewbacca were also there to assist the chaos, along with a very worn and battered Artoo-Detoo. Artoo was crusted with so much mud and slime, Luke wondered if the droid had somehow managed to get eaten by a Dagobah dragonsnake or the equivalent during their time apart. But that story had to wait for another time.

At that moment, Han spotted the signal flare of an escape pod in the wreckage. A jolt run through Luke's body as the _Luck_ moved to intercept it.

"Cray," he said automatically. Somehow, she must have managed to escape after initiating the dreadnought's automatic self-destruct--though Nichos and Callista had not. Could not have, since their plan had succeeded and the _Eye of Palpatine_ destroyed.

He didn't think he could bear to look Cray in the face, to meet her eyes, knowing that she had lived and Callista had not. But he knew that if he didn't, he would regret it for the rest of his life. She'd suffered, too.

He had to do it, for his sake as well as hers. So he hobbled down to the hold doors in the aft bay to welcome her back into the world, as one battered survivor to another.

But it wasn't Cray in the pod after all.

She _looked_ like Cray on the outside. That was the hardest part, the part that some who had known Cray before never got used to. She had the same face, with its straight nose and delicate bone structure; the same blonde hair, hacked raggedly in a crude imitation of stormtrooper regulations; the same ethereal beauty that Cray always had borne with such ease. But there was something different in the way she carried herself, even when sprawled unconscious in the webbing of the escape pod, that would have triggered his suspicions even without the Force screaming inside of him that this wasn't Cray at all.

She didn't _feel_ the way Cray did to his Force-senses. Cray had been all steel and logic, roiling coils of living armor on the hedgedillos Han had told him about on Corellia--stubborn and tough, yet flexible, alive, vital, capable of growth and movement. Cray shone like a star at nova, full of brilliant, ceaseless energy, her creative genius pulsating beyond the physical container that housed her spirit. That energy had guttered and nearly extinguished during that long, slow week of torture and captivity on the _Eye of Palpatine_ \--but had rallied and flared up again at the end, when they'd plotted the ship's destruction.

What he felt now was nothing like that. Callista's energy was soft and tranquil, blue waves on an endless ocean, filled with aquatic life. Her spirit rippled in endless, unceasing waves, joyful like the dances of the sea-creatures she had grown up with on Chad, the rocking of rafts on the water.

That was what he felt when he looked at Cray now. It was impossible. And yet--and yet--

When she opened her eyes, and he saw that they were grey, all his doubts fled and he _knew_.

He reached out to her, helped her sit up, gently, tenderly. They were both so bruised, so fragile. They'd never touched in flesh before--only in dreams. He was afraid she would vanish if he pressed too hard.

And they were whooping and sobbing and laughing and pressing against each other in their joy at finding each other alive and it was Callista's voice that he heard aloud, instead of in his head--not Cray's. And they were kissing each other, a long slow, endless kiss that he hoped would never, ever end--

\--and then he came back to himself to discover that he was in the aft corridor of the _Hunter's Luck_ with Han, Leia, and Mara were clustered in the doorway, frozen in shock and surprise.

Everything was so simple and easy, when he was on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , when he was near death, when he didn't know if he'd come out alive. He'd begged, argued, pleaded with the Force and with fate and Tor's beloved Gy-ri and whatever other deities he could think of to save Callista, and here she was, and yet--

\--he realized that getting what he'd asked for came with complications of its own.

"She stepped aside," Callista said slowly, tears dripping down her face. She didn't bother to wipe them away. "It wasn't my idea. Nichos went up the shaft as we planned, and was hit, badly, and began to shut down. Cray wanted to stay with him, to cross to the other side. She didn't want to live without him. She said if she couldn't be with the one she loved in this world, at least someone could. She said to thank you, Luke, for all you tried to do for her, and for all you did."

He kissed her forehead, wondering how much of her explanation the others had heard. Shakily, he helped her to her feet, and turned to face the others, one arm wrapped around her shoulder for support. The surprise radiating from them was thick and palpable -- and there was a level of tension underneath the surface than he didn't like. He wasn't sure if his explanations would help, but he had to try.

"Han, Leia, Mara," he began. "I know she looks like Cray, but she isn't Cray now. Her name is Callista."

***

It took a long time for the entire story to come out, on all sides. Luke spent the rest of the week in a bacta tank on the planet Belsavis, while Han, Leia, Mara, Chewbacca and the droids dealt with the aftermath of several intertwined crises, triggered by the _Eye of Palpatine_ 's sudden resurrection and demise. Callista spent three days in the medcenter before she was released, alternating her time between the mopping-up action and sitting by Luke's side.

It was during those days, while Luke was still unconscious, that Callista realized that she could no longer touch the Force. Later, he learned from Leia that a sobbing Callista had disappeared for hours, only to turn up curled up by the Luke's bacta tank in the medcenter the next morning as if nothing had happened.

When Luke finally woke--warm and safe and not in pain for the first time since he'd stumbled across the _Eye of Palpatine_ \--Leia had pieced together the different strands that had brought them all together, into a coherent whole.

After Luke had departed to Ithor with Cray and Nichos to supervise their errantry, Mara had received a message from her slicer friend Ghent about unusual financial transactions and mechanical breakdowns occuring in the Senex sector, centered around the planet Belsavis. Curiously enough, these transactions involved many prominent Ancient Houses that had been in high favor in the heyday of the Imperial court. The families had retreated to their home sectors after Palpatine's death and--on paper, at least--remained stubbornly neutral, uninterested in alliances with both New Republic forces and the Imperial remnants.

Ghent had also found evidence suggesting that one of Palpatine's former concubines, Roganda Ismaren, was at the center of these mysterious dealings. Given Ismaren's security clearance and access codes--and several references to her in Palpatine's secret files--Ghent thought it likely that Ismaren had also served in the capacity of Emperor's Hand.

"Mara was quite upset about that," Leia said, which Luke would later learn was the understatement of the century.

("There do seem to be quite a lot of ex-Hands roaming about," Tor interjected, shaking her head. "Palpatine rivals Gy-ri for sheer numbers." Gy-ri was a Sawarran--'saint' was probably the closest term to it in Basic, or maybe 'archetype'--who was frequently depicted possessing as many hands as the artist could cram onto her otherwise human body. "Like superweapons and clones and secret plots for galactic disarray, he could never have too many, I guess."

"Anyway--" Luke said. "As I was saying--")

Mara ordered Ghent to immediately inform Leia of the suspected conspiracy, and had Karrde send the bill for the tip-off to the New Republic government before she'd set out for Belsavis in the _Hunter's Luck_ to investigate. "'It takes a Hand to catch a Hand,' as she later put it," Leia remarked dryly. Meanwhile, Leia, on a diplomatic tour with Han, Chewbacca, Winter and the children in a nearby sector, decided that she would conduct her own investigation on Belsavis.

"It's three days in hyperspace between here and Yavin, so I got here first," Leia explained, with a dazzling smile. "It turned out to be just as well. I grew up as a member of one of the Ancient Houses, and they--respected me as one of their own. Even in adversity, as it were."

The heart of Ismaren's plot was her Force-senstive son, Irek, who had been altered by one of Cray's heroes, the cognitive theorist Nasreeda Magrody, to use the Force specifically against machine circuitry.

Luke blinked at that. "Er, I don't think you need special alterations for that," he said. "It's not as easy as more organic manipulations, but I can do it if I have to. And many of my students--like Cray--could do it even better and faster than I can--"

"Well, apparently Ismaren didn't know that," Leia said. "She had Magrody kidnapped, imprisoned for over a decade while he worked to prepare Irek for the grand destiny she envisioned and then she disposed of him." She grimaced. "To cover her tracks, she spread rumors that I and the other survivors of Alderaan had Magrody killed for his role in the Death Star project."

It was Irek who had wakened the _Eye of Palpatine_ and summoned it to Belsavis as the beginning of a campaign of terror against the New Republic. Coupled with the boy's ability to manipulate machine circuitry, the effects of the sudden, unprovoked attacks would have been devastating.

Luke had to admit that Ismaren's plot had come dangerously close to succeeding. If any of the threads had fallen through, she would have wrecked considerable havoc in the galaxy--

"Fortunately, Karrde, and Ghent alerted us in time, and I was able to inform Ackbar and the other New Republic military commanders of the danger," Leia said. "You, Cray, Nichos, and Callista destroyed the _Eye of Palpatine_. And Mara's hunting Ismaren and her son for us even now."

So that was why he hadn't seen Mara again. He'd wondered about that.

"So, all in all, things worked out pretty well, except that Karrde's fee is going to blow holes in this fiscal year's budget," Leia concluded. "Just another day in the New Republic."

He laughed, took his sister's hand and squeezed it. "Just another day in the New Republic," he agreed.

Whatever else happened, he thought, whatever other problems remained, it was good to be alive. And not everything had gone to hell just yet.

***

He and Callista went with Han and Leia on the _Millennium Falcon_ to Coruscant. Mara was waiting for them on the landing platform when they arrived. So were Roganda Ismaren and her son, bound and gagged, with ysalamiri nutrient frames tied to their backs.

Ismaren, who had been a lovely woman before Palpatine and the Dark Side had twisted her, couldn't stop shuddering as the pebbly gray lizard drooled over her expensive and scandalously low-cut gown. Irek, fifteen and fancying himself the center of the universe, bore his imprisonment with the dull, hateful resignation of a spoiled brat who couldn't quite believe his reign of terror had come to an end.

The question of what to do with the pair quickly became academic. Somehow Ismaren managed to hang first her son, and then herself in their shared cell before their trial date was even set. Mara was furious, and spent hours pacing the morgue and the jail, searching for evidence of escape or outside cover-ups and all of the associated intrigue among the Ancient Houses, but nothing was ever proven either way. Given how quickly the Ancient Houses had surrendered to Leia, and how snobbish they were about Ismaren's lack of breeding and the poor manners of her son, Luke strongly suspected that Ismaren had acted alone, purely out of spite, the final petty vengeance of an angry, humiliated, desperate woman who had seen no other way out.

Still, knowing that the likely fate of those two would have been to spend the rest of their lives stripped of their access to the Force via ysalamiri, Luke was terrified that Callista--still grieving over the loss of her powers--might make the same choice.

"Luke, I'm fine," she said when he confessed his fears to her. "Stop hovering. I know you mean well, but please, just--stop."

"All right," he said and dropped the subject. But he continued to worry anyway.

Callista may have been restored to a human body after two decades trapped in spirit form, but she had also lost her friends, her family, everything she knew from her old life, and the Force in the process. She faced these losses bravely, but Luke knew from the way she carried herself that she still hadn't gotten used to these unexpected gaps between what she remembered and the present moment. He did what he could to help her, though he was painfully aware he couldn't block it all from her--nor should he. Still, it was hard to watch her suffer, when there was nothing else he could do except be there for her.

Sometimes she forgot how to show emotions on her face. Sometimes she forgot how to end a conversation. She was unsettled by advances in technology, the change in popular culture--though the bootleg holovids about Luke's (mostly fictional) exploits amused her. She spent as much time outdoors as possible, a challenge on a world as urban and developed and artificial as Coruscant.

"I'd forgotten how much work it is to be human," she'd confessed to him at one point. "Breathing. Sleeping. Eating. Cleaning. Shitting. None of this is necessary when you're a ghost."

"And pleasure?" Luke said, running his fingers across the stubble of her hair. The ragged tips were growing out a pale brown instead of blonde.

She leaned into his touch. "Oh, yes. Well, you don't need a body for that. Or pain, either. It's just--faster and more intense now, that's all. Different sensory channels. But--it's worth it, I'm just surprised how hard it is to get used to it again--what I used to take for granted--"

To make matters even more confusing, Callista's existence straddled an odd legal space. Biologically, she was "Dr. Cray Mingla," despite the fact that she had none of Cray's memories, talents, or interests. According to New Republic law, she was in Cray's body, and therefore she _was_ Cray, with full rights to all of Cray's assets. The dysphoria was heightened even further by Cray's celebrity status in certain academic circles, none of whom seemed to notice that their beloved "Dr Mingla" had changed.

"How can people who study artificial intelligence be so _dense_?" Luke had fumed one evening, after Callista had encountered an old colleague of Cray's, who refused to believe that "Dr. Mingla" didn't recognize her. The elderly professor had kicked up quite a fuss before Luke had been able to intervene.

"It's all right, Luke," Callista had said, pulling her face away from his shoulder. "It's human nature, after all, not to see that which is directly in front of it. Everyone expects to see Cray, so of course that's all they see." She choked back a sob. "It's like--living with a ghost. Except _I'm_ the ghost. I'm always a ghost. I'm just the ghost in the flesh now, not the ghost in the machine."

Luke pulled her close again. " _I_ don't see Cray when I look at you. You're so different. You might have the same features, but you carry yourself differently. Your voice is different. And your eyes--" He paused to kiss each eyelid. "I'd know you, Callista, no matter what body you wore. Your spirit shines through. They just don't see it yet. But give them time. Give them time. The people who matter will realize the truth and who cares about what the rest think?"

"I want to come with you to Yavin," she said. "Maybe at the academy--surrounded by other students--I can find the Force again. I can be whole again--"

"You're whole _now_ ," he said. He didn't like that line of thinking, didn't like that she thought of herself as damaged, even though he understood the cause. "You're healthy and whole. You died and yet here you are, _alive_ again, beyond all hope, all reason. The Force runs through you like a river, just as it always has, just as it does for all beings, Jedi or not. Billions upon billions of lives and most of them never know the Force the way you did before--but most of them don't get a second chance at life, either."

He took a deep breath, and shared what the Great Jedi Tree on Dagobah had told him, long ago, when Luke had shown it his missing right hand. It sympathized with the pain of a lost limb, yet pointed out that new growth eventually emerged over time. The body called for symmetry and yet asymmetries naturally arose, through the vagaries of light, wind, water, and chance. It was nothing to be ashamed of.

"I told it I wasn't exactly a tree," Luke said, "and do you know what it told me?"

"What?"

"'Not so different.' I didn't understand the meaning then, but I think -- I think I might now."

"I wish I could see the uneti trees again," she said. "They were so lovely, their leaves and branches dancing in the wind, rising up out of the Jedi temples on every world. I cried when I learned that Vader and the Emperor had destroyed them all."

"There are still seeds," Luke said. "We planted two of them on Yavin when we founded the academy. They--suffered some severe..."--he had to pause to find the right word-- " _pruning_ a year ago, but are growing fast and strong again now. Believe it or not, they're taller than I am."

Callista leaned into his arms, considering. "But how do I reach them without the Force? Even if they recognize me, how could I hear what they are saying to me?"

"I know a woman who says you don't need the Force for that."

"How is that even possible?"

Luke shrugged. "You ask her that." It was easier to experience Tor than it was to describe her, especially to someone who had never met her.

"I'd like to see the trees," she said softly.

"All right," he said, "Yavin it is. I'll make the arrangements."

***

"Oh- _ho_ ," said Tor. "So this is what you say about me behind my back, Skywalker."

"It only hurts because it's true," he countered.

She laughed. "A hit! A hit! Well-played, sir, well-played."

"I have my moments. Whether the next one was one of them--well, you can judge for yourself."

***

On board the _Hunter's Luck_ en route to Yavin, Luke sat with Mara and Callista in the lounge, discussing Jedi philosophy. Luke was relieved to see that some of the tension that had engulfed Mara ever since Callista's resurrection seemed to have abated. No doubt some of her ease was due to Roganda Ismaren's fate--they had not been friends at the Imperial Court, and there had been old scores to settle. Yet from the agitation that still roiled under the surface, he suspected Mara was still convinced that their deaths were no accident.

To be fair, Mara's life--first as the Emperor's Hand, then as second-in-command for Talon Karrde--had given her a healthy distrust of human nature, something that frequently challenged her at the academy. The less charitable would call it "paranoia," but Luke knew from experience that such strategies succeeded at keeping people alive and functioning in grim situations, even if they were less than helpful in other contexts. And he'd learned the hard way during Kyp Durron's rebellious stage that Mara's instincts were to be trusted even when all other evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

Still, the look on Mara's face when she'd thought he was kissing Cray haunted him. He wasn't sure why he felt so guilty about that inadvertent misunderstanding, especially now that Mara knew the truth. It wasn't Cray at all and never had been. Didn't she know he wasn't the sort of person to sleep with one of his students? Didn't she _trust_ him to be a better person than that?

Between Luke's recovery and Mara's quest to bring the Ismarens to justice, they hadn't spent much time together in recent weeks, and he'd missed her company. Time alone with Callista had been wonderful--but everything with Callista was new and different, unlike the easy, companionable bond he shared with Mara. It was dizzying and exhilirating to be with Callista, to care about one person so much, to the point where he began to see why the old Jedi might have outlawed relationships in the first place. He was, as his old master Yoda would say, firmly and deeply attached.

In contrast, Mara had been a calm, steady presence in his life for years now. They'd forged a bond that had been tested repeatedly under fire, banding together time after time to save each other under tremendous odds: a trek across the jungles of Myrkr, a raid on an Imperial Star Destroyer's prison unit, an assault on an insane Jedi Master's fortress, to name just three of the more memorable expeditions. She'd been the first person he'd asked to come to Yavin--not as a student, but as a fellow teacher, an equal. She'd held her own against Palpatine's own clone and killed Joruus C'baoth with her own hands; she was just as much as Jedi as he was, even if her training had taken a markedly different path than his. He trusted Mara with his life. She trusted him with hers. They understood each other on some level that went deeper than words, even when they couldn't seem to say the right thing to each other.

And then Callista had arrived, and everything had changed. Luke couldn't blame Mara for being disconcerted by the other woman's abrupt entry into their little circle; he still couldn't believe it himself, and he had _lived_ through the whole thing. So he was especially pleased Mara had dropped some of her icy demeanour and appeared to get on well with Callista. She needed friends just as much as Luke did, if not more.

"So, how did the old Jedi order feel about relationships?" Mara asked. "We've been struggling with this at the academy for some time now."

That was an understatement. The discussions between Luke, Mara, Corran, and Tor had been long and heated, months before the academy had ever accepted its first students. At present, they had agreed that relationships themselves were not the problem--but because they evoked so many strong feelings, they could be a trap for unwary or immature students who had not yet mastered the long, arduous task of knowing themselves. They had also agreed that relationships between teachers and students should be forbidden, due to the expansive gaps between maturity, power and experience that frequently arose in such liaisons. Beyond that, they'd decided to play it out on a case-by-case basis.

Their first test had been with Kam and Tionne, both of whom were mature, stable, reliable, and had not let their bond interfere with their training at the Academy. They were the first of Luke's students who he'd felt comfortable setting in teaching positions on Yavin, though he hoped that Kyp, Cilghal and Dorsk 81 might eventually join them when they were ready. Kirana Ti would likely return to Dathomir to set up a satillite training center there, and Streen was--a little too unstable to be granted much authority, despite his considerable powers.

The second test had been Cray and Nichos, who had already been lovers when they arrived at the academy. That, too, had been fairly straightforward. But the third test was Luke's own personal relationship with Callista, and he wasn't certain how his colleagues would recieve it--especially since Callista inhabited Cray's body now.

"Well, it's complicated," Callista said in response to Mara's question. "My master, Djinn Altis, trained in the Jedi temple on Coruscant and attained the rank of Jedi Master, though he split off to follow his own path not long afterwards due to his disagreements with the Order's philosophy. He believed that marriage was acceptable for Jedi, as long as it followed certain precepts, and he encouraged his students to do so." She smiled faintly at a memory. "His wife's name was Margani. She was so kind to me. She made the best rolki-rolls I've ever tasted.

"They traveled the galaxy in their spaceship, the _Chu'unthor II_ , which is how I met them. Master Altis came to my raft-community on the oceans of Chad, and showed me how to use the Force for the first time--" She broke off abruptly, her face tightening in pain as she recalled that magical hour.

Luke, who had shared that memory with her in a Force vision on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , took her hand and squeezed it.

Callista blinked, realizing how much she'd strayed off-topic and pressed onward. "But that doesn't answer your question, I think."

Mara shrugged. "To be honest, it's reassuring to hear that we're not the only ones wrestling with that same questions. I think it would be helpful to learn more about Master Altis's guidelines for his students' relationships. But even just knowing those practices existed is useful. Luke promised his teachers he would restore the Jedi Order, and every deviation from the path they followed means an endless amount of agonizing, even when it's clearly the right thing to do."

This was true enough, from a certain point of view. Luke would argue that his aversion to change stemmed less from love of tradition than his deep, abiding fear that he would fail one of his students as badly as Obi-wan Kenobi had failed Anakin Skywalker, thereby triggering a new era of galactic oppression. Mara and Tor had argued that this was an excellent reason to change the old ways, but it was hard for him to let go of many of the old practices and beliefs--especially if Yoda had been fond of them.

Mara glanced down automatically as the datapad on the cushion next to her hummed. "Ah, it's Ghent. Mind if I answer this?"

"It's fine," said Luke, aware of the role the young slicer had played in averting the crisis surrounding the _Eye of Palpatine_.

Callista nodded.

"Thank you," Mara said. "Ghent likes to ramble when he's excited, but I'll try to keep it short." She opened the pad and pressed the screen, then got up and took it with her as she headed for her quarters.

"Hi, Ghent," Luke heard in the distance, her voice growing fainter and fainter as she moved down the corridor away from them. "What did you find for me this time?"

Callista leaned against Luke, and he wrapped his arm around her. Since that first day on the _Luck_ , he'd avoided public displays of affection in front of Mara, and Callista had done the same, though they'd never spoken about it.

"What's that about?" Callista murmured.

"I dunno," Luke said, burying his face in her neck. "We'll find out later if it's important."

They were so engrossed in each other, they didn't notice when Mara came back a few moments later, until she stamped her foot on the floor with delighted laughter. Luke and Callista jerked away from each other to see Mara dancing a wild solo with vengeful glee, the datapad still open one of her hands.

"I can't _believe_ it," she said, when she was finally motivated to stop and catch her breath. "He found it. He kriffing _found_ it."

"He found what?" Luke asked, realizing it must be something very important to get this strong of a reaction of out Mara.

Mara set the pad back on the table and began to pace the room. "Proof that at least two of the Ancient Noble Houses in the Senex sector paid to have Roganda Ismaren and her son murdered before they could go to a formal trial. Apparently, they either weren't aware of the amnesty deal Leia negotiated with Drost Elegin on Belsavis or they didn't care. They were smart enough to funnel the funds through three dummy corporations, but not smart enough to stop Ghent from tracking everything.

"Luke, you have no idea what that woman did. Not just to me, but other people," Mara said with indignation. "I was Palpatine's servant, but I--served the Empire. Roganda Ismaren--served herself first and foremost. She _enjoyed_ making people suffer."

Given the gleam in Mara's eyes, Luke decided it was better to keep quiet for now.

"I'm just glad to confirm they're both actually dead," Mara continued. "I was worried they had managed to somehow fake their deaths and escape, despite all of the precautions we took to prevent it. Ismaren lived on Coruscant for decades--longer than I did--and she knew a lot of secrets. She didn't seem like the type to commit suicide. Nor did her son."

Luke realized he didn't know what Mara had done to bring those two to justice, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. It might have been for peace and justice in the galaxy, or at least the good of the New Republic, but it was also a deeply, intensely, personal act for her. He trusted her to stay on the right path, rather than dabbling with the dark side, but--still. He knew from experience that when the personal became mixed with duty, the temptation to take shortcuts was excruciating.

"So that's good to know," Mara continued. "Ghent is forwarding this information to Leia, in case the New Republic wants to use this as private leverage against Drost Elegin and the Senex sector. I think it'll go far towards ensuring cooperation in the future. Those aristocrats might be snobs, but they always prefer to put intermediaries between themselves and any real conflict. Cowards."

She was fiercer and angrier than Luke had ever seen her. He realized Leia hadn't been exaggerating at the reaction the news of Ismaren's existence--let alone as another Emperor's Hand--had evoked in her.

Mara jerked her head back towards the pad. "I have the microphone on mute right now, so he can't hear us, but Ghent is still on the line. Says he'd love to chat with Callista, if she's up for."

Callista nodded, no doubt wondering what the slicer had to say with her. "Give me the pad and I'll talk to him."

Mara picked it up off the table and tapped the screen twice. "All right, Ghent, here's Callista. Try not to overwhelm her with your usual gibberish, she hasn't had a chance to pick up modern slang yet."

"That's fine," chirped a familiar voice, and Mara handed the data pad over to Callista. On the screen, a pale youth sporting long blue locks lounged in a chair by a computer console. He looked painfully young to Luke's eyes, despite being his junior by less than a decade. Spending time with Ghent reminded Luke far too much of his nineteen-year-old self--what he might have become had he stayed an Alliance fighter pilot rather than running off to Dagobah to be a Jedi.

Ghent might well be Talon Karrde's greatest asset, a genius slicer who could cut his way through anything with a processor in record time. Away from a computer, he was as dazed and innocent as a newborn, which lead to awkward conversations and misunderstandings with those who didn't know him well. Since Ghent had helped the New Republic survive the Thrawn crisis by cracking the mysterious Delta Source, General Garm bel Iblis had made it his personal mission to lure Ghent onto the personnel roster ever since, but to no avail. For now, at least, Ghent was sticking with Karrde's organization.

Although Mara was technically on leave from her position as Karrde's second-in-command, Ghent was fond of her, often sending her tidbits of useful information at unexpected intervals. Under the circumstances, Luke wasn't surprised to find that Mara had quietly asked Ghent to continue investigating the Ismarens. As long as she wasn't using any money out of the Academy budget for it--

"Hi!" Ghent's image waved from the screen as Callista settled the pad on her lap. "Are you the computer lady?"

Luke had to fight to control his astonishment--and laughter. Callista smiled wanly. "Yes, I am. But I'd prefer it if you call me Callista for now."

"I should have warned you that Ghent has no social skills whatsoever," Mara said.

"Not my area," Ghent agreed cheerfully. "But Miss Callista, you understand, I'm a slicer, and I spend my days working with computers, and when I heard you had actually been inside one using the Force, I wanted to ask you--what was it like?"

Luke was suddenly aware of Mara Jade tugging at his elbow. "Come on," she said with a smile. "Let's give them some privacy."

Callista met Luke's eyes and nodded. "I can handle this, Luke, don't worry about it," she said quietly. "Besides, it's rather sweet."

"All right," Luke said, following Mara out of the lounge into the hallway. Once they were out of earshot, Luke turned to the other Jedi.

"Mara, can I ask you something?"

"What is it, Skywalker?"

"Something's been bothering you recently. I wanted to check in to make sure everything was all right."

"Oh," Mara said. "Well, it's been a rough few weeks for everyone, Skywalker. Ever since Ghent told me about Ismaren's little plot, I've been--working overtime to stop her. It's--almost a letdown now that it's all over."

Everything she'd said was true, but there was something else, something she wasn't telling him, because all of the tension was still there. Her emotions flickered and danced on the surface, calm and steady--but a rigid tension lurked underneath, an impenetrable wall stretched like a dam over a river to block its natural flow. There was something she didn't want him to know.

Were her private fears really any of his business, though?

"Well, that's a relief," he said, deciding for the moment to take her at her word. "I was worried about you--"

It was the wrong thing to say. She closed off from him, slamming down on the openness between them, like she had in the old days when Palpatine haunted her, demanding that she kill him.

"You don't need to worry about me, Skywalker," Mara growled. "I can take care of myself just fine, thank you. But I do have a question for _you_."

"What?" Luke said, not sure where this conversation was going.

"Are you happy now?"

He paused. What an odd thing to ask. But her intense focus told him she wasn't asking lightly. Whatever the reason, the answer was important to her.

He took a deep breath, let it out. Then another. He was calm, at peace. His wounds were healed. All was well with his family, his friends, his students. Callista was alive, and she loved him; Mara would be fine, and they were returning to the academy together. Life would go back to normal.

"Yes," he said. "I'm happy."

"Good," she said, and turned away. "I'll be up at the helm if you need me. We'll be at Yavin soon."

"Mara--"

But she was already gone before he could stop her.

Luke stood alone in the corridor and attempted to process what had happened. He was acutely aware than something important, something ground-breaking and earth-shattering, had occurred between him and Mara--and yet he had no idea exactly what had transpired.

***

Was Mara jealous of Callista? He'd wondered that, thinking of Mara's reaction at their first meeting in the cargo bay of the _Hunter's Luck_ , going over their conversation in the corridor in his mind like a womp rat worrying a bantha cub.

It sounded absurd when he phrased it so baldly. Mara wasn't exactly chatty, but she was far from mute. While she was capable of diplomacy and tact when she felt like it, her preferred style was blunt and to the point, especially when it came to Luke's failings. He was used to Mara making her preferences exquisitely clear; it had never occurred to him that she might hold something back.

Surely, if she felt that way about him, it would have already come up. Hadn't they spent the last year and a half working together on a daily basis to get the academy up and running? If she _was_ interested, she'd never given him even the slightest hint. She kept her manner cool and professional, even when they were naked and alone in the hot springs together.

There was no question that Mara Jade was a beautiful woman, and Luke found her attractive. She was also ferociously competent, with a wide-ranging and subtle mind, gifted with a wicked sense of humor and a knack for bailing Luke out of trouble. She had his back, and he had hers, no questions asked. He trusted her with his life. Her presence in the Force was a constant, steady glow, self-assured and powerful. He couldn't imagine the academy without her.

He couldn't deny that he'd thought about a relationship with her, wondered what that might be like. But he couldn't bear the look of pity on her face if she said no--or how that might influence the rest of their work together at the academy. She had never been his student, but she was a teacher, and right now, teachers he trusted were few and far between.

Even then, Luke Skywalker had never been one to turn away from impossible odds. If she'd ever given him the slightest hint that she felt that way about him, he'd risk everything for love, regardless of the staffing implications down the line. But that had never happened, and he'd never asked.

Luke shook his head. He was assuming too much. Too many variables, as Tor would say, and not enough hard data.

Maybe Mara was lonely. Maybe--seeing Luke with Callista had been hard for her, not because she was in love with Luke or jealous of Callista, but because she wanted a partner in her own life?

He knew from experience with Han and Leia, it was hard to watch someone else's happiness when it seemed to be exactly what you wanted for yourself, yet eluded your grasp. He loved both his sister and brother-in-law dearly--he had no regrets, he had no designs on their happiness--and yet it had been hard when they had paired off, leaving him alone. Things had changed. Sometimes he'd even missed the old days when Leia hadn't been his sister, and Han had been his best friend instead of brother-in-law.

If that were the case with Mara, he'd have to convince her that he was still there for her, that he wasn't going to abandon their friendship now that Callista was a part of his life. He knew Mara was sensitive about that sort of thing. She'd been taken from her family at such a young age; then raised to love the Emperor as a grim and distant father, whose death had devastated her--

He sighed. Somehow, they'd work it out. They always had before. He'd make sure of it. And in the meantime, he'd try to be sensitive to her feelings as best as he could.

It would help if he knew exactly what was bothering her, but the odds of prying that information out of Mara right now were worse than a snowball's chance on Tatooine. He would have to be patient and observant, and see what happened as more evidence became available.

***

When he returned to the lounge, Luke was surprised to find Callista was engrossed in her conversation with Ghent.

"All right, Ghent, I've got to go," Callista said, when she finally looked up to notice him standing in the doorway.

"That's fine, Callista," Ghent's voice said, "I'll send you my comm codes so we can chat later if you want--don't worry, they're _very secure_! Bye now!"

Callista broke contact and closed the pad, setting it on the couch beside her. She stood up and went to greet him. "How long were you listening?"

"Not long at all. I just popped in to see how you were."

"How's Mara?"

"She said she'd be up in the helm until we landed on Yavin. I think this business with the Ismarens has really upset her equilibrium."

"As has my presence here," Callista said.

Luke winced. So much for hoping Callista hadn't noticed Mara's standoffishness. "Don't take it personally. It takes her a while to open up to new people. When I first met her, she was under a personal compulsion from Palpatine himself to kill me. She fought it off, and now she's an integral part of the academy. I never would have been able to get it off the ground without her."

It was bad enough that Mara was upset and he didn't know why. He hoped Callista wouldn't be jealous, too, especially when there was no need. "How do you like Ghent?" he asked, in an effort to change the subject.

"He was very kind," she said. "Curious. Earnest. Asked me a lot of question that everyone else has been too ignorant or scared to ask. Like how it felt to work against the Will, what I did to circumvent it, and how much of Cray's memories I retained. If I had known a fraction of what he does, I might have been more effective at crippling the _Eye of Palpatine_ thirty years ago and saved everyone else the trouble."

"But then I never would have met you," Luke said.

"Yes," she agreed. "It's... strange how life works out."

"Sounds like you made a friend, though."

She smiled. "I did, didn't I? Who would have thought?... He's so young, so very young. There are thousands of worlds he's never seen and has no interest in; he's so captivated by the inner life of machines there's no room for anything else. But he thinks I could have a future in programming, given my experiences, even without access to Cray's memories."

"Do you want to?" He was relieved to see she was considering something else outside the Force and the Jedi, even if it didn't seem to fit her personality.

She shrugged. "I don't know what I want, Luke. I mean, aside from staying with you. I'm still trying to figure out who I am now, with this body and mind. What I can do. And I hope to feel the Force again someday, too."

"You will," he said. "I'm sure you will. But even if you don't, there's so much life has to offer. And Yavin is beautiful. I can't wait to show you what we've done here."

"Yes," she said, and kissed him. "Yes, yes, yes, yes."

***

Flanked by Mara and Callista, Luke walked down the gangplank of the _Hunter's Luck_ to the old Rebel docking bay where Corran and company waited for them. Luke's throat tightened as he saw how many people had turned up to meet them. He reached for Callista's hand, uncertain which of them he hoped to reassure with the gesture.

In retrospect, it made sense for Kyp and Cilghal to be here to welcome them. They were Mara's proteges now, and of course they would be eager for her return. In Luke and Mara's absence, Corran had been in charge--but somehow, Luke hadn't expected Corran to bring Tionne with him.

"I thought you told them what happened," he said quietly to Mara.

"I _did_ tell them," Mara said, not breaking stride. "But you have to admit, it sounds kriffin' crazy. You can't blame them for wanting to see it for themselves."

No. No, he really couldn't. Callista had wanted to come to Yavin with him, to see the Academy, and this was a hurdle she inevitably had to pass through. He warned her about it before their departure. She set her chin and declared that she could handle it, no matter how his students might react to her existence.

Luke expected his students to be open-minded and welcoming, but introductions were going to be awkward. After all, it wasn't every day that they met a spirit from the past animating the body of their dead friend and colleague, one who had been an intimate part of life at the academy.

Corran saw Luke reaching for Callista's hand, and stared. While his outward expression didn't change, his eyes read "hypocrite" and his disappointment in Luke was palpable even from this distance. Luke didn't have to use the Force to see the wheels turning in his head, all the skepticism and cynicism from the other man's years with CorSec coming right to the fore: _Religious leader has power go to his head, hooks up with attractive young follower, returning to the fold to assure his congregation that all is well and the gods smile upon his behavior--_

Corran was a good man to have at your back in a fight, and a competent Jedi and instructor, but he was also a real asshole when he wanted to be. Luke hoped he could disavow the other man of his suspicions without actually coming to blows. Why Corran couldn't take the situation at face value before jumping to conclusions was beyond Luke's ability to fathom--

In constrast, Tionne Solustar, wedged in between Corran and Kyp, didn't see Callista until she and Luke were halfway down the gangplank. As soon as she did, a smile lit up on her face and she bolted towards them at a run, her silver hair streaming like a comet behind her. "CRAY! YOU'RE ALIVE!"

And before Luke or Mara could stop her or say anything, Tionne swept past them both to grab Callista in a welcoming embrace.

Callista froze, but Tionne didn't seem to notice in her rush to greet her friend, her words coming out in one long, headstrong, rush. "They told me you were dead, but I didn't believe it, and here you are at last, and oh, _Cray_ , it's so good to see you, I was so _worried_ \--"

Tionne stopped abruptly and pulled back, staring into Callista's eyes. For a moment, the two women gazed at each other, while everyone around them stared in awe and horror at the unfolding scene.

"Oh," said Tionne softly, and Luke's heart broke at the pain and loss conveyed in that single word as she let go of Callista. "Oh. I'm so sorry. I don't know you at all. Forgive me."

"My name is Callista," Callista said, her words intended for Tionne, but loud enough so everyone else could hear. "Cray and I fought together aboard Palpatine's rogue warship. She saved my life the only way she knew how."

She looked around at the others waiting at the bottom of the gangplank, and met each of their gazes in turn. "I was a Jedi once, a long time ago. One day, I might be a Jedi again."

There was a long, agonizing pause as Luke's mind caught up to everything that was happening and he opened his mouth to say something--

\--only for Tionne's face to light up like a firecracker at a Corellian harvest festival and beat him to it. "Oh! A Jedi from the Old Republic! How wonderful! I can't wait to hear all the wisdom you have to share with us--not to mention all the songs and stories-- Master Skywalker, can I take her to her rooms?"

Luke nodded. He'd intended to do it himself, but perhaps it would be easier to introduce Callista to the other students if Tionne was there as a bridge. "Give her the tour and make her feel welcome."

"Of course!" Tionne reached for Callista's hand, and led her down the gangplank, her warmth and candor returning in earnest at the thought of another source to interview for her beloved history work. "But first, you'll want to meet everyone here. This is Jedi Corran Horn, one of the instructors here--"

"I go by 'Kieran' these days, Tionne, thank you very much," said Corran disgustedly, as he stepped forward to shake Callista's hand. Fearful of assassination and kidnapping attempts on his family, Corran was doing his best to remain incognito. Though given how frequently Tionne forgot, Luke thought that Corran's delusions of anonymity were doomed to frustration. "Pleased to meet you, Callista. I--admit, I didn't believe Mara's account until I saw you just now."

Callista nodded. "I understand."

Well, that was as close to an apology as they were going to get from Corran, so Luke counted it as a win. Good. He could relax a little. No beatings would be required.

"And these are Jedi Jade's students, Kyp Durron and Cilghal," Tionne said, indicating both the dark-haired young human and the salmon-colored Mon Calamari who stood on Corran's other side.

Kyp bowed. "Honored to meet you, Callista. Thanks for taking those Imperial bastards out with you. The last thing this galaxy needs is another one of their superweapons."

Coming from Kyp, who had once threatened to rampage across the galaxy in a different superweapon as revenge for his shattered childhood, the irony was profound. But he'd calmed down since Mara had taken over his training after the defeat of Exar Kun, remaining firmly in the light after his near-disastrous brush with the dark side, and there was no point in bringing up the past now.

Cilghal bowed, too, with her usual diplomatic grace. "Pleased to meet you, Jedi Callista. And thank you for taking such good care of Master Skywalker when he was injured."

"Yes, Cilghal, I want you to look over both of them completely and make they've healed properly," Mara interjected. "They've come a long way since I pulled their escape pods out of vacuum, when they were half-dead and barely clinging to life. It's a testament to the power of the Force that they're _both_ still with us."

"But the tour--" Tionne said.

Time for an executive order. "I'll go with Cilghal first, Tionne, and she can meet with Callista after you've finished," Luke said. "Neither of us are going to drop dead immediately."

Cilghal nodded, accepting the compromise. "I'll wait for you at your quarters so we can have privacy, Master Skywalker," she said, and withdrew. With a nod to Luke, Callista and Tionne followed at her heels.

"Well, back to business," Corran said with a shrug. "Good to see you, Mara, Luke, even if trouble does follow you both like a pack of saber-tigers after a wounded nerf." He tipped his head at them both, and turned to leave.

Kyp's eyes followed Corran's retreating figure, waiting until he was safely out of earshot before he spoke. "I'm surprised neither of you have killed him yet."

"Yes, well, he has his uses," Mara said shortly. "And it's not like you're anyone to talk." She turned to Luke. "I think we should have a memorial service for Cray and Nichos tonight. Otherwise--"

Luke nodded. "I was going to suggest that myself. It'll be good to have everything out in the open as soon as possible. They were both so loved here--"

"I still can't believe they're gone," Kyp said. "Seeing Callista here--I know it's Callista, master, you told me, but I swear when I saw her just now, it took a moment for my mind to catch up with my senses."

Mara nodded. "Well, everyone's going to have to get used to it. You and I will make the arrangements for the memorial service. As for you, Skywalker--get yourself over to your quarters and let Cilghal work on you."

Luke let out a breath in relief. He ought to have known Mara would have his back. "Thank you, I appreciate this--"

"I'm doing this for the academy, not for _you_ , Skywalker," Mara said. "Not to mention saving all of us some trouble later on. That's what I'm here for, to think of the consequences, right?"

"Right," Luke said. There was more depth in her words than he was capable of unpacking right now; the most important thing was that any crisis was, for the moment, averted. "I'll see you both at dinner, then."

But she was already walking away with Kyp even as he spoke. He stood alone in the docking bay with the _Luck_ , the gangplank closing automatically as the maintenance droids swarmed the ship for a tune-up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Callista's accout of Cray's sacrifice is paraphrased from _Children of the Jedi_ by Barbara Hambly, but "She said to thank you, Luke, for all you tried to do for her, and for all you did" is a direct quote.
> 
> Gy-ri is based on the [Bodhisattva Kannon (Guanyin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanyin#Guanyin_and_the_Thousand_Arms), who is often depicted with a thousand hands and arms. 
> 
> Luke's conversation with the Great Jedi Tree about losing a hand is in Chapter Four of [Suicide Run](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929528). 
> 
> Ghent's remark about social skills--"Not my area"--is a nod to a line in the BBC's _Sherlock_ series.
> 
> Additional meta and commentary [here](https://atamascolily.dreamwidth.org/4877.html).


	3. Chapter 3

Luke's voice trailed off. A chronometer discreetly tucked amidst the bromeliads blinked "1030" in bold, flashing strokes, and he realized that he had been speaking for almost two hours. Judging from the state of the table, he'd also managed to consume his entire breakfast and half a dozen cups of cha without registering any of it. 

Tor stood up with a yawned and stretched. "That's enough for now, Skywalker, I think. I'll take care of the dishes. Meet me in the cargo hold in ten minutes and we can spar." 

"Lightsabers?" he said hopefully, though not truly serious. Tor had made it very clear at the outset of this trip that she didn't approve of lightsabers on her ship except in the utmost emergencies. 

"Nice try, but no. We'll use staves, like civilized people, where the worst thing that happens if someone slips is a tap on the head." 

This was an old argument that both played on for humor; there was no real heat to it. Tor was convinced that lightsabers were dangerous, and had no place at the Academy. Luke thought they were essential, for precisely that reason. On her ship, Tor got to win, but she'd never been able to convince anyone else at the Academy on her position, so lightsaber training was still an essential component of the emerging curriculum. 

The debates always ended the same way. Tor would shrug, muttering something about how it was all fun and games until someone lost a hand, and while she had no doubt the Force would help prevent accidents, it wasn't something she wanted to be responsible for. In response, Luke would hold up his prosthetic right hand, nod gravely until she left the room, and continue his students' lightsaber training--very, very carefully. 

Luke wasn't as skilled with staves as he was with his lightsaber, but that was fine; life was too short to be good at everything. The popular assumption was that a Jedi master excelled at all forms of combat, but that was far from the truth, at least in his case. The Force amplified what he already knew, allowed him to push himself beyond his usual limits, and helped him master new skills faster, but there was no shortcut for simple repetition, day in and day out, to train body and mind to master a given task. The Force was a powerful ally, but it was not a convenient shortcut to universal competence. He only wished it were so. 

He took a quick detour to the 'fresher, and made his way down to the cargo hold, the one place on the _Destiny_ large enough for sparring practice. Technically, the conservatory occupied more area, but Tor had crammed it so full of plants that Luke could barely move without jostling something rare and precious. It was better to spar in the empty bay, where they could move freely, without risking destruction of her botanical collection in the process. 

He was surprised at how much Tor had drawn out of him, how easy it had been to release the torrent of words and feelings that had been pent up inside him for for the last month. He hadn't meant to say as much as he had, and yet opening up to Tor hadn't made him feel vulnerable at all. He felt--connected. Seen. Heard. Witnessed. Validated. It was a strange sensation - not unpleasant, but not common, either. 

There were so few beings in the galaxy that Luke felt he could be truly open with at the best of times: Leia, Han, Mara, Callista, Tor. Maybe Wedge, once upon a time in his Rogue Squadron days, but they'd drifted apart since then, and Biggs was long-dead, space dust drifting in the battle against the first Death Star. Yoda and Ben were gone too, and there had been too many lies and half-truths to make conversation with them comfortable or easy. 

But Mara and Callista were out of reach now, and Leia and Han were systems away dealing with the logistical challenges of their own lives and the New Republic, and only Tor was left. He'd been relieved when she decided to spend the practice period with him on Yavin, her presence a solace even in silence--and even more grateful now that she'd opted to skip out and take him with her. Never mind they were embarked on a mad quest for uneti trees that probably didn't even exist. It was enough to be off Yavin for now; some time away could only improve matters. 

He wished Tor had been there at the Great Temple when he'd returned with Callista and Mara, instead of off in the jungles with a horde of graduate students. If she had been there, maybe things would have turned out differently in the end--

He let out a long breath. Ah. The past again. It ached and ached, but there was nothing to be done about it now, only facing the future as it came. And, with it, the hope that somehow--somehow--things might be different in the future. 

Tor came in a few minutes later, dressed in her usual gray coveralls. She'd looped thousand tiny dark braids that rivaled Leia's Alderaanian wedding crown for complexity, into a dense knot on the back of her head to keep them out of the way. In her hands were two long, straight sticks made of tulsiki wood, a common tree on Sawara known for its density and strength. 

She handed one to Luke and he bowed, accepting it with both hands in the traditional gesture she'd taught him. She bowed in return, and they settled a meter apart from each other, resting one end of their staves on the ground, and their left hands wrapped around the top. 

"Do you remember the first kata?" Tor asked. 

Technically he did, but it had been several months since they'd last practiced together. "You go first and I'll follow." 

Tor nodded and they began. 

For thousands of years, monastics on Sawara were forbidden to carry weapons, resulting in a complex and fascinating set of martial arts featuring an unarmed practitioner using hands, feet, and various farming implements against armed attackers. Tor's sect practiced a particularly pacifistic form that emphasized blending and melding with the opponent, and using their own energy to subdue them without injuring them. Instead of hoes and rakes, they trained with simple walking sticks. 

Having sworn no priestly vows, Tor was not subject to the prohibition against weaponry, and her fieldwork required a vibroknife and a blaster in case of trouble, sentient or otherwise. Still, ten years of training ran deep, and she preferred to solve problems without lasting violence wherever possible. Where violence was required, she was brutally effective, employing the least possible amount of motion to achieve the desired effect. Luke had seen the same grim, unyielding efficiency in the movements of professional ex-assassins, like Mara and the Noghri commando forces--and yet the transformation was especially jarring with Tor, who was usually so jovial and peaceful.

The kata were series of choreographed routines, as the practitioner battled with one or more imaginary opponents. They could be performed solo, but they had been designed with a partner in mind, who performed the same motions a beat or two behind, rather like a round in choral music. When performed properly, the effect was a graceful, shifting dance of attacks and parries, spins, weaves, and dives. There were thousands of katas, ranging in complexity and number of movements, but the first kata was relatively simple, only twelve steps, and fairly easy to master. All Luke had to do was mimic Tor, a step or two behind, and the dance flowed automatically. 

Aggressive impulses were not rewarded in this tradition, so Luke, as the defender, got to "win" by stabbing his staff at Tor's exposed flank in the final step. Tor smiled, and bowed. "Again." 

They ran through the kata six more times before Tor was satisfied and switched to defending while Luke attacked. When they switched again, she sped up the tempo, until their staffs were flying as fast as Luke could process. He knew what Tor would do before she did it, and could respond accordingly, without having to rely on the Force for insights; it wouldn't have worked well, anyway, as he found it difficult to read her even at the best of times. Instead, he was free to focus on what he was doing and react without having to plan or strategize--which was, Tor had explained once, the entire point of the exercise. 

("Well, one of them, anyway. It's a rare task that only accomplishes one function, don't you think?" she had said.)

Right now, one of those functions was that there was no room to think about the past if he wanted to avoid a blow from Tor's staff. Still, a part of his mind couldn't help remembering a certain day in the academy dojo, the familiar snap-hiss as Callista ignited her topaz lightsaber, glowing like a miniature sun in the shadows, and the dread that overwhelmed him as he stared at her crouched before him, waiting-- 

BAM. The staff slipped from his fingers to clatter on the ground, and the end of Tor's weapon halted a few centimeters away from his exposed throat. "Sorry," he said weakly, as she withdrew.

"Thinking about Callista again?"

He flushed, and bent to pick up the staff to cover it. Tor couldn't read his mind, she was fishing in the dark, but it was a reasonable guess--and, in this case, the right one. "Sorry," he said again, not wanting to meet her eyes or hear a lecture about the dangers of an unfocused mind right now. 

Tor shrugged. "Is it helpful?" 

That was easy. "No." 

"So why are you doing it?" 

Luke brought his staff back up into the starting position. "Why am I getting romantic advice from someone who's never been in a relationship?" he asked rhetorically. 

Tor grinned, not offended in the least. "I'll remind you, Skywalker, that I _am_ married--" 

"To a _tree_ \--" 

"It was a perfectly legal ceremony--honored in all Sawarran prefectures--how _else_ was a laywoman supposed to live in the same place as fine, upstanding monastics--?" 

But she was laughing, and he couldn't stop laughing either, both of them leaning on their staves now and whooping about the absurdity of their lives, with all its ups and down and attendant failures. In her case, the marriage hadn't been her own idea, but a trick concocted by the wily old abbot of Akkan-ji to convince his skittish brethren to shelter Tor from the Imperial-backed Sawarran government. Still, it made for a good story. 

"All right," Tor said at last, when they'd finally managed to collect themselves. "Shall we move on to kata number two?" 

The second kata was harder--thirty-two steps, including some odd and unusual moves he hadn't quite mastered. He nodded, and leveled his staff at her, and the dance began again. 

***

Back in the 'fresher after their sparring, Luke surveyed his face in the mirror, unsettled by what he saw there. He'd always felt older than he looked after his ordeal on Cloud City, but the week on the _Eye of Palpatine_ had aged him more than he liked to admit. The bruises had vanished with bacta treatment, the medical droids had removed the shrapnel edges from his cheeks, and Cilghal had thoughtfully erased the scars, but there were lines and subtle wrinkles around the edges of his face that hadn't been there before. Every pain and grief he had experienced in the last decade was present in his eyes; whether he was aware of it or not in the moment, he carried those experiences with him. 

_When nine hundred years you reach, look this good you will not!_ Yoda had chided Luke on his deathbed, sensing Luke's unspoken shock at the old teacher's decripit appearance. Studying his reflection now, Luke had to agree his old teacher had had a point. He looked _worse_ than Yoda now, if such a thing were possible. 

Since Callista left--just before the start of the practice period--he'd been too wrapped in a dull stupor to bother with shaving. Over those weeks, he hadn't managed to grow anything more than a few inches of ragged stubble across his jawbone. The grizzled hermit beard had suited Ben Kenobi well enough, but didn't fit Luke at all. He made a face and shaved, careful not to cut himself in the process.

With the beard gone, faint traces of his old self peeked out of the mirror at him, the remnants of the happy-go-lucky kid who had traipsed off with Obi-wan to the stars, eager for adventure. It wasn't enough to completely restore him, but it was a start. 

What had Tor said to him last night? Something about how the vast emptiness of interstellar space was less terrifying than the empty places inside his own mind and heart. Yes, that sounded about right. At the moment, Luke found drifting in space to be infinitely preferable to examining the past--except that his thoughts always circled back to the worst moments, round and round in an endless slurry of guilt and self-blame. 

He'd been through so much pain and suffering in his life thus far. So many battles, so many enemies, so many losses, so many failures: Owen and Beru slaughtered, his right hand hacked off at the wrist, nearly falling to the Dark Side goaded by Emperor Palpatine's taunts. He'd lost his father, only to regain him moments before he died, too late to truly know him. There was Dev Sibwarra's death at the hands of the Ssi-ruuvi, and that disaster at Mindor, where he'd been forced to kill to save his own life and the lives of billions. 

As a teacher, he had not fared much better. He'd almost lost Kyp to the dark side, and three of his Jedi students had died under his watch. He thought he'd lost Callista, only to be blindsided by her miraculous reborn in Cray's body--and again at her disappearance. And now Mara was gone, too-- 

This must have been how Ben felt when he went into exile, Luke thought. How his failures must have eaten at him, every day, alone in the desert. How comforting the desert must have been for him in those dark early days when the Empire was rising. 

The desert was a good place to go when you were empty. 

Luke had grown up listening to the desert: the howling sandstorms that lasted for days, the dull swish of the dune sand shifting under his feet, the clatter of pebbles falling from the canyon edges into the depths below. Inevitably, the sounds always faded, revealing the implacable silence underneath, the silence that had endured forever and would outlast time. In the stillness, his thoughts rang loud and clear, echoed by the silent voice of the desert that proclaimed how meaningless and small he was, how nothing he could do or say would outlast the endless wastes. 

In adolescence, he had rebelled against that desolate, unbearable isolation. He strove to _be_ someone--anyone--grand and important, and accomplish great things. He'd stood on the edge of the desert, watching the sunset, his heart aching, swearing he would make something with his life, move beyond the emptiness that had dominated his life thus far. 

He had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He'd saved the galaxy several times over, played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Empire, gained the power to manipulate minds and matter beyond the ken of ordinary folk. Yet--here he was, returning to Tatooine again, lonely and defeated, grappling again with the weight of his own failures. Empty. 

But this time, he wasn't alone. Tor was here with him. She might be annoying as hell, but at least she wouldn't abandon him. And she wasn't afraid of emptiness. It was a fundamental tenet of her sect, after all. 

"Form does not differ from emptiness," she'd said. "Emptiness does not differ from form. Feelings, perceptions, formations are also like this. Vast emptiness--nothing holy, and yet everything holy."

For Tor, form and emptiness were simultaneously the same thing and complete opposites. It was a paradox Luke didn't understand--one that Tor insisted _couldn't_ be understood by reason, it could only be experienced as a fundamental, contradictory truth of reality. 

" _Do or do not. There is no try,_ " Yoda had insisted. Luke had taken it to mean that he should plunge himself wholeheartedly into the task at hand, holding nothing back. But Yoda had always been subtle, and it was increasingly clear that the "do not" was just as important to the old Jedi master as any concrete action--perhaps even more so. 

_Maybe it's time to make peace with the desert_ , he thought. _Maybe it's time to accept the emptiness--inside and outside--instead of fighting it._

Funny. He thought he'd learned that lesson before, with his father, with his sister, with his students, over and over again. Yet here he was, right back at it again. _Round and round I go, over and over again, until the lesson sinks in, one that might take me my whole life to learn._

And yet--and yet--if there was one thing Luke had learned from his father Anakin Skywalker, it was that it was never too late to let go of hate, fear, and aggression, and embrace love and acceptance. 

It wouldn't be easy. If it were easy, he would have already done it. And yet--

He would go back to the desert, and he would see what it had to offer him now. He would listen to the silence, and let himself be empty. And perhaps, out of that vast space, a new direction would emerge. 

***

"Ah, good," said Tor, upon his entrance to the conservatory a few minutes later. "I meant to warn you about the starving jenka cat attacking your face, but you seem to have dealt with it very handily. My congratulations." 

Luke brushed aside a plume of purple orchids and sat down by the holo-table. "I take it I meet with your approval now." 

"Well, if 'cult leader of questionable mental stability' was the look you were aiming for earlier, you nailed it," Tor said as she spritzed a series of green tufts with no discernable roots that were dangling from hooks in the ceiling. "I much prefer this version of Luke Skywalker, myself." 

"Duly noted," Luke said dryly. "How do those plants survive without soil like that?" 

"These are Miraki air-plants," Tor said. "As the name suggests, they take water and moisture through their leaves - sort of like mini vaporators, except they horde the water for themselves," Tor said. "In the wild, they form dense colonies on top of anything that will sit still for long enough--including some of the dumber herbivores--but I've had trouble adapting them to the altered humidity levels aboard ship. Their growth is tied in to the direction of the local magnetic fields, and they express their resentment of the fluctuating levels here by developing brown rot and expiring." 

"That's--very strange." 

Tor shrugged. "As you may have noticed, the galaxy is a strange place. Most people find that troubling, so they do their best not to look too hard. But you'll find oddities like these air-plants anywhere you go." 

"Not on Tatooine," Luke said firmly.

"On the contrary. The _Galactic Field Guide to the Outer Rim Territories, Volume Six_ claims that there are no plants on Tatooine at all. If that's true, what do wild banthas eat?" 

Luke frowned. "I guess that depends on what you mean by 'plant'. There are certainly some plant-like things out there in the dunes and canyons, and plenty of desert lichen and salt-flat algae in shadier spots. I always assumed that banthas ate them." 

"A reasonable assumption," Tor agreed. "But banthas are _big_ \--several hundred pounds at a minimum. How much lichen would a single bantha have to consume each day just to stay alive? Is that really sustainable?" 

He saw where she was going with this. "So how do they do it, then?" 

Tor shrugged. "Like I said, the galaxy is a strange place. We know they must do it somehow, because wild bantha populations exist, but we have no idea how. That's where people like me come in. We poke around, ask annoying, inconvenient questions, and, if we're lucky, eventually emerge with an explanation ranging from the plausible and obvious to the incredibly bizarre." 

"I thought we were looking for trees, not banthas." 

"We are. I'm just using the banthas to prove my point. Every place that supports life is full of these odd, impossible contradictions. Once you start to notice them, they're everywhere. It's one of the things that makes my job so fun." 

"And the others?" 

"Well, I get to travel to interesting places and meet interesting people. And you never know what's going to happen next--" 

"Sounds like being a Jedi then," 

"There is some overlap," Tor agreed. "It's one reason why we get along so well, don't you think?" 

"And here I thought it was my personality--" 

Luke was cut off by the high-pitched whine of the alarm, informing them that they would be dropping out of hyperspace shortly. Both of them were on their feet and heading for the cockpit, just in time to see the starlines shrink down to single points of light, and the great brown sphere of the planet out of the central viewports. 

"Do you want me to land at the spaceport in Mos Eisley?" Luke asked, as he strapped himself into the pilot's chair without asking Tor for permission. 

"Do I _look_ like an idiot?" Tor said, sliding herself into the co-pilot's chair beside him. If Luke's usurpation of her rightful place bothered her, she didn't comment. 

"...No." 

"Take us in closer and I'll put in the coordinates," Tor said. "This is going to be _fun_." 

***

Halfway through their descent into the atmosphere, the comm crackled. "Unidentified ship, please state your name and business," a grim voice declared in heavily accented but intelligible Basic. 

"False IDs are right there," Tor whispered, pointing to a dial on Luke's right. She turned to the comm. "This is the _Chvantha Maru_ , on a routine survey mission for the Independent Academic Explorer's Corps." 

"Negative," said the controller. "Alter your present course to land at Mos Eisley spaceport and communicate with proper authorities." 

"I don't think you understand," Tor said. "We have no business in Mos Eisley. We're here for aerial surveys and will land only in the event of an emergency. Besides, we have permits." 

"All permits must be submitted through the proper channels," said the controller, with obvious skepticism. "No such permits have been received." 

"Right here," Tor whispered to Luke with a grin. "I got them all ready right here." 

Luke raised an eyebrow, but transmitted the permits as directed. They kept descending. 

" _Chvantha Maru_ if that's really your name," sputtered the comm a few minutes later. "Permits denied. Alter your course to Mos Eisley spaceport or face impoundment." 

"How rude!" Tor remarked under her breath. "I thought you said nobody cared if we landed on this dustball?" 

"Well-- things must have changed," Luke said. "Last time I was here, we came in at night behind the moons to avoid stirring up any Imperial or Hutt presence. If anyone saw us, they assumed we were smugglers and left us alone." 

"Did you not read the permits I sent you?" Tor said into the microphone. "What part of 'Don't even bother trying to stop me' did you not understand? Did I use the wrong verb?" 

"You still want to bribe them?" Luke asked under his breath. 

Tor snorted. "I'll save my credits, thank you very much. These guys are all talk--" 

" _Chvantha Maru_ , this is your last chance. Alter your course, or be destroyed--" 

"Oh, I don't know about that," Luke said, pointed to the dashboard, where at least five fighters were barreling towards them. "The markings are all wrong for the planetary government. Those look like Hutt ships to me." 

"I see them, I see them," Tor said. "Can you evade them?" 

Luke studied the approaching vessels as he pondered his options. The whole situation was completely absurd. He was a Jedi Knight, a distinguished ex-general in the New Republic military, traveling under false IDs to a backwards planet for questionable ends. Leia would be upset if he triggered a diplomatic incident, assuming word of this clandestine expedition ever got back to her. 

He hadn't fought or flown in a starship battle in _years_. 

He looked down towards the sandy wastes that stretched out below them in endless waves, then back at the coordinates Tor had fed the _Destiny_ 's navicomputer. If they maintained their present course, they'd be directly over the territory that Luke had spent his adolescence exploring, poking about every nook and cranny until he'd known like the back of his hand. 

And in a sudden burst of insight, he knew exactly what he needed to do to win. _Without_ hurting anyone in the process. 

Unless they weren't good pilots. In which case they deserved what they got if they were crazy enough to follow him--

"Strap in, and hold tight," Luke said, a wide grin stretching across his face as he embraced the full audacity of his plan. "I have an idea." 

***

Han Solo liked to boast about his record time on the Kessel Run, but Luke had always quietly wondered how his brother-in-law would handle a trip through Beggar's Canyon, given the chance. Of course, he'd never managed to get Han out to Tatooine to prove which of them was the better pilot once and for all--but perhaps that was for the best. Leia would be furious if the two of them ever risked their necks for nothing more substantial than bragging rights, and it would make family dinners awkward. 

Still, for better or worse, Beggar's Canyon was the place above all others that had shaped Luke into the ace pilot who had destroyed the Death Star against impossible odds. Yet nobody from his new life had ever seen it or knew what it meant to him. 

There wasn't much to do in a three hundred kilometer radius around the town of Anchorhead, so they'd had to make their own fun. All the local kids--Luke among them--would fly out to Beggar's Canyon for a taste of adrenaline and adventure, swerving up and down the narrow walls in their souped-up landspeeders, Skyhoppers and swoop bikes. They'd invented countless games for the bored, fool-hardy, and the daring, but the most dangerous of all was the straight run, pummeling through the canyon as fast as possible in an attempt to beat one's fellows. Luke had worked damn hard to make sure Owen and Beru never suspected what he was up to or they would have grounded him for the rest of his life.

And now here he was again, over a decade later, flying towards the canyon in an unfamiliar ship, a trail of starfighters in hot pursuit. He hadn't even touched the surface yet, and already he'd had more excitement in fifteen minutes than he'd had in fifteen years on-planet. 

He brought the _Destiny_ towards the ground, shooting across the top of the Benzin Plateau, the fighters hard on his tail. He wondered if they knew what was coming, or if they thought he wasn't crazy enough to do what he was about to do. 

As it happened, they were right--it was a damnfool stunt and incredibly dangerous. Landspeeders and skyhoppers in the canyon were one thing, and Luke wouldn't hesitate to take an X-wing through in a pinch. But the _Destiny_ was larger than all of them, and he wasn't exactly sure how she would handle on the turns. There was not much margin for error, and he'd learned the hard way that the canyon was unforgiving in that regard. Still--if the _Destiny_ was designed to move like a living thing, he might be able to get away with it--

He wasn't racing for speed, but it was amazing how old habits kicked in. He didn't have to be particularly fast, just slightly faster than his pursuers. It was just as well--taking the route too fast was likely to kill them. 

Taking the route too slow, of course, had its own dangers. 

" _Chvantha Maru_ ," squawked the voice on the comm, increasingly panicked as Luke's intentions became clear. "Desist present course immediately or be destroyed. Desist present course--" 

Tor flicked a the switch and the comm fell silent. "All right, Skywalker," she said calmly, as the rock walls of the canyon rushed towards them at several hundred kilometers an hour. "I think I see what you have in mind. Show me what you can do." 

Anyone else, he thought, would have screamed at him, shouted at him to turn around, but she sat in the co-pilot's chair beside him, radiating calm and trust, which buoyed him like a raft in a storm-tossed sea. 

_I can do this. I can do this. I am Luke Skywalker, the best pilot the galaxy has ever seen (sorry Han) and nobody can outfly me on my home turf._

He aimed the _Destiny_ towards the canyon's narrow stone opening--dubbed the Notch by all the locals--knowing even as he did so that the fit would be tight. In an X-wing, he would have flipped the craft sideways, but the _Destiny_ was longer than it was wide, and there was no way such a manuever would help them. All he could do was rush towards the opening, knowing he would have only a few seconds to abort the run if the ship was too wide to enter after all. 

The canyon walls rushed towards them, faster and faster as he punched the acceleration and the ship hurtled forwards--and the _Destiny_ slid through the crack with room to spare, just like he'd seen the reitar carp swim up the fish ladders in the Amuja River on Sawarra. 

They were in. 

Three of the fighters--not being idiots--swung up over the top of the canyon and away. Their strategy was simple and sane: to watch over their target from above and strafe them when they emerged, rather than engaging at close quarters. It was a sensible decision--and, as it happens, exactly the wrong thing to do if they wanted to detain him. 

Now there were only two fighters left to worry about: a grubby-looked B-wing that wobbled and wavered in midair and a Z-95 Headhunter that someone had pulled out of a junkyard and held together with shafti-tape. If this was the sort of firepower the local cartel was packing, Luke wasn't intimidated by their ability to carry out their threats. 

Though, as Luke discovered when both ships opened fire a second later, the crafts might be ugly, but their weapons systems worked just fine.

It didn't matter. Both ships were single-seaters, and Luke didn't think that they could fly a route this complicated _and_ shoot straight at the same time. Luke could do it with the Force to guide him, but unless they had a droid partner or were born lucky, he doubted any of their pursuers' shots could hit the _Destiny_ at this range. 

He relaxed a little as the canyon widened to form the promenade that he'd always known as the Main Avenue. If the _Destiny_ had made it through the Notch unscathed, they had nothing to worry about for the moment. 

The Main Avenue was long, almost ten kilometer, and he had time to prepare himself for what came next. They passed the turnoff for the Prospector's Loop, then the Raider's Razor, then Diablo Cut. He'd taken all of those side-routes more than once in a Skyhopper and lived to tell the tale, but none of them were paths he cared to handle in a ship the size of the _Destiny_. But perhaps, maybe, some other day--

And then they rounded a bend as the canyon swerved, and they were right where he wanted to be at last. 

The Dead Man's Turn had once been an oxbow loop, formed by an ancient river shifting in its bed, but now it was a death trap for anyone foolish enough to run it unprepared. To continue to the main channel required a 120° turn, the result of a tributary spilling into the river in that distant epoch when Tatooine still had surface water. If you didn't make the turn in time, you ran up a dead-end box canyon for a few hundred meters, before you were forced to turn around and try again from a safer angle. In a race where every second counted, such a detour meant you had effectively lost. 

Fortunately, Luke didn't need to complete the route to win. 

Ten seconds until he reached the turn. Did the other pilots know what was coming? 

Five. Four. Three. Two. One. 

_Now_. 

He spun the _Destiny_ around the Turn as fast as he dared. There was a sheering scream as metal scraped against rock, and he knew he'd clipped something. For a heart-stopping moment, the the ship buckled underneath them and and Tor gasped in surprise and shock--but nothing exploded and the whining ceased as Luke pulled forward. There was no time to assess the damage; he didn't dare stop now. 

He was delighted to see the B-wing miss the turn completely and hurtle up the box canyon away from them. If the pilot was paying attention, he'd notice the walls before he hit them. If he didn't, it wasn't Luke's problem. 

That left him with just the Headhunter to worry about, and that was easy, too. 

_I just have to find the right spot... it was around here somewhere...._

He dove down towards the canyon bottom, even as the Headhunter pursued him, firing wildly--

\--only to slam on the brakes hard enough so that Z-95 shot ahead of them, veering around the curve ahead to avoid careening into the rock walls around them. Now he had a few precious seconds where none of their pursuers could see what they were up to--

\--and he spun the _Destiny_ in a looping reverse as he continued towards the ground, backing the ship under an overhang that he knew from experience wasn't visible until you were practically on top of it. 

There was barely enough clearance to pull the _Destiny_ through. Luke thought he heard more scraping as he brought the ship in for a landing, but it didn't matter now. Even if he had to re-wire half the _Destiny_ 's components himself, they wouldn't need to move any further for the time being. He doubted the pilots would be back for a second pass once they realized their prey had escaped. They scanned like opportunists, in search of easy money. And unless one of them had spent much time in the canyon, there was no reason to think they knew about this spot-- 

He looked over at Tor, who had been uncharacteristically silent for most of their journey. She was breathing hard, her expression frozen in shock. For a moment, he worried he'd upset her--but then she caught her breath, and _smiled_ at him with that familiar warmth and sincerity, and he realized with a start that her exhiliration matched his own. 

"Skywalker, that was _amazing_! I've never seen anything like it! I heard stories about your piloting and I've seen the old battle footage in the holos, but I never thought to see it first hand--" 

"You're not mad that I damaged your ship?" Luke asked, taken aback by how nonchalant she was with the situation. 

She shrugged. "Oh, that? Don't worry about it. The _Destiny_ is stronger than she looks. And besides, it was worth it to see you fly like that--" 

Han would have been beside himself at the slightest hint of damage to the _Falcon_. He'd never let Lando forget about that satellite dish he'd lost when he borrowed the freighter for the Battle of Endor. He was relieved that Tor was less protective of her craft. 

"Oh," said Luke. "Well, we're safe for now. If we lay low here for the rest of the day, they'll get bored and go home." 

"What if they find us?" 

Luke gestured towards the grey rock flecked with dark and shiny specks outside the cabin windows. "Magnetite. Lots of iron-ore," he said. "It confuses the most ship sensors up close. It's hard to get good readings in here, especially life-forms." 

Tor stared at him, her eyes wide. "You mean, you went through that flying _blind_? No sensors at all?" 

"Yes." 

It took her a moment to process that. "You're amazing," she concluded, with a shake of her hand, and began unstrapping herself from her seat. "That was the most amazing flying I've ever seen." 

"You should have seen me thread the Stone Needle when I was eighteen," Luke said with a smile. "One of the best moments of my life. Those pirates are going to have to work harder to beat me on my home turf." 

"So now what?" 

"Now we go see how much damage I did to the ship," Luke said. "And hope we don't run into any of the local wildlife in the process." 

"Is that likely?" 

"If there were womp rats here, we'd know it already, and krayt dragons are nocturnal. So we're probably fine. But stay here and wait for me while I take a look around." 

***

Even in the shade of the overhang, sheltered from the glare of the twin suns by the rock walls that loomed overhead, the low humidity was a shock after so long in the Yavin jungle. The air was so... thin here, and it was much easier for him to move and breathe, even as it wicked precious moisture away from his body. The gravity, too, was slightly lighter than Yavin's, and it took less energy to move than he was used to. 

He might have grown up hating this sandy dustball, but even after a decade away, on some level his body still recognized this place as home.

_I don't even know where home is anymore. Coruscant, with Leia and Han? Yavin, at the Academy? Tor always knew Sawarra was home, even when she was in exile--but somehow, this isn't the kind of home I imagined for myself..._

He circled the ship, wincing at the scratch marks that covered the the ventral and posterior ends of the ship - the belly and tail of the "carp", but relieved to discover only cosmetic damage, nothing that would keep them off the ground. He peeked out of the underhang, but there was no sign of any ships overhead. 

The rocks around them were a dark purple-grey, flecked with rusty-red flecks where the iron-rich magnetite ores were exposed to air. Sensors got confused down here, and it wasn't uncommon for them to fail outright; it was easier to explore the canyon blind than rely on technology to see for you. It was just as well he hadn't mentioned that particular fact to Tor at the outset, or else she might have forced him to abort the run. And here they were-- 

"Hello down there!" 

Luke looked up to see an old human male dressed in faded grey robes shimmying down the canyon wall above him on a coarse rope ladder. Like Obi-wan, the man's face was lined and weathered from the harsh glare of the twin suns, but his beard was long and ragged, with colorful strings and fibers threaded into it for decoration. From his attire, he was one of the eponymous "Beggars"-- followers of an obscure sect requiring vows of poverty and contemplation in the desert. Surprisingly, their vows had never included isolation, and they enjoyed watching the swoop races from the shelters they carved into the cliff faces, often bantering and betting with spectators on the outcomes. 

"You must be Luke Skywalker, I recognize you from the holos," the man called. He squintd and frowned as he drew closer. "You're shorter than I expected," he decided, eight feet above Luke's head. 

"I get that a lot," Luke muttered. He ought to have known he couldn't remain completely anonymous here. Even after all these years, the locals considered him one of their own. 

"What are you doing here?" the old man said as he dropped down to the ground beside Luke with practiced ease. "Have you come to re-enact the finest moments from _Luke Skywalker and the Dragon Pearl of the Desert_ , where you battle a three-headed krayt dragon for the mystical jewel that will grant you control of the universe? --That was always my favorite," he added as a quick aside. "Or is this the scene in _Luke Skywalker and the Horrors of the Jundland_ , where you must race the Sand People to an ancient fortress home to a powerful Jedi spirit, which both the Empire and a Hutt crime cartel claim as their own? Or is this one--I forget the title--where you fall in love with a red-haired dancing girl and take up circus performaning with a trained rancor--" 

"Actually, it's something else," Luke said, as he realized that the old man wasn't all there in his mind. Of all the things he'd expected to find on Tatooine, a holo-fan with a shaky grasp of reality hadn't been one of them. "Top-secret mission. _Very_ classified. The fate of the New Republic depends on us. I can say no more!" 

The hermit bowed and saluted. "Never fear, hero, your secret is safe with me! Ah, and who is this?" he asked, as Tor emerged from over the underhang into the open.

"My trusty sidekick," Luke said, enjoying the look of surprise on Tor's face as she processed the situation. "We sought shelter in your canyon when we were pursued by lawless brigands; I beg your pardon for disturbing the peaceful meditations of you and your holy brotherhood." 

The hermit shook his first in the air. "You find us in hard times, Luke Skywalker--and yet, I confess, there has never been a time when life was not hard here." 

"Don't I know it," Luke muttered under his breath. 

"But I hope you'll accept what poor hospitality we Beggars can offer you. Would you and your sidekick care to join me for a meal?" the hermit asked. "Afterwards, Brother Amaeo and I will be watching _Luke Skywalker and the Phoenix Women of Deshar Nebula_ , a personal favorite of his. We'd love to have your perspective on what _really_ happened after the New Republic government covered up the secret Imperial installation that created those brave, doomed creatures." 

In Luke's opinion, _Luke Skywalker and the Phoenix Women of Deshar Nebula_ was one of the more execretable holo-films with his name in the title--crossing the line from titilation to outright pornography without bothering to flirt with the truth in the process--but Tor interjected before he could speak. 

"Of course we would! Right, _Master Skywalker_?" she said, directing a thousand-watt smile in Luke's direction. 

Luke sighed inwardly. He ought to have known Tor would make him pay for the sidekick line. The old man was eccentric, but he seemed harmless enough and Luke didn't sense anything in the Force that would suggest duplicity or malice. And it wasn't as if he had anything else to do right now except wait for their pursuers to clear out. 

"All right," he said, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into. Again. 

He rolled his eyes as Tor cheered and used her slave remote to close the gangplank of the _Destiny_ behind her. 

The old man was already scaling the rope ladder back up the way he had come, shouting that it might _look_ ragged but was strong enough to hold all three of them at once. 

_This trip might be painful but at least it hasn't been boring_ , Luke thought as he tested the hermit's rope ladder and readied himself for the climb. 

***

Luke's nerves were on edge as he listened for the sound of machinery overhead, but their luck held and everything was quiet. It was only after he and Tor had clambered up the rickety rope ladder over the carved stone railing into the hermit's cell that the B-wing flew by, buzzing like an angry hoverfly overhead before zipping away down the canyon.

And that was that, he decided. They would wait until the next morning to leave, but the odds of anyone returning to comb the canyons for them were minimal now. With any luck, their pursuers would decide that Luke's aerial stunts had turned him into a grease spatter on the rocks, and head back to Mos Eisley for easier prey. 

_Nothing to see here,_ he thought, smiling at the irony. _Move along_. You didn't need the Force to vanish out here -- you just had to be clever. A healthy dose of luck didn't hurt either. 

Dinner was simple, but filling: a heaping platter of womp rat stew, garnished with dried algal flakes, with a scoop of bantha milk cheese on the side. The stew wasn't as good as Aunt Beru's, but it wasn't bad either, and he ate heartily, surprised at how much he'd could miss the gamey and distinctive taste of canyon rat after so long away. Eating it made him feel like he was sixteen again, stopping in to see the canyon Brothers after risking his life in a speeder race. If he closed his eyes, if he let himself imagine it, the illusion was so vivid it made his heart ache, and he quickly opened his eyes to bring him back to the present again. 

They sat on the balcony of hermit's dwelling, which offering a spectacular view of the canyon, their food balanced on a makeshift table in front of them. Thankfully, Luke was spared the necessity of conversing with their host--Brother Marco--as Tor spent the meal peppering him with questions about the contemplative life and the Holy Brotherhood. 

In turn, Brother Marco was happy to oblige, offering stories of his daily life since joining the Brotherhood ten years earlier. Most of his tales revolved around prayer, contemplation and occasional supply visits from local traders in Anchorhead and caravans of Jawas peddling goods in exchange for good luck charms, blessings, and the occasional salvage job. 

"That's where we got the holoprojecter, you see," Brother Marco explained, pointing to a lump further in the cave, wrapped under several layers of heavy canvas to protect it from sandstorms. "We keep it in my cell, because it's the largest. Every now and then we get a new holo for the collection." 

"We?" Tor repeated curiously, as she finished her stew. 

"Ah, yes, there are many more of my brotherhood in dwellings just like this one throughout the canyon," Brother Marco said. "Mostly we keep to ourselves, but Brother Amaeo and I have made it a tradition to watch a holo together every seven days. He should be here any moment now--" 

As if on cue, an equally lean and ratty old man appeared on a rope ladder in front of the balcony "Ah, Brother Marco, you have visitors, I see," he said with remarkable nonchalance, as he swung one leg over the railing. "Are they here for Holo Night as well?" 

"Brother Amaeo!" Marco exclaimed. "How wonderful of you to join us. Yes, yes, they are. Indeed, we have none other than Luke Skywalker himself--and his trusty sidekick," he added, with a polite nod to Tor, "here to join us, as they prepare for a top-secret mission for the New Republic. The fate of the galaxy is at stake!" 

Luke grimaced. Tor grinned and waved. He hated that she was enjoying this.

"Excellent!" Brother Amaeo said with remarkable composure, as if legendary heroes turned up on his doorstep on a regular basis. He pulled a data chip out of the corners of his voluminous robes. "As promised, I have come with the holo of 'Luke Skywalker and the Phoenix Women of Deshar Nebula'--a gift from a pious local who wished to share tidings of such good deeds with us poor canyon hermits." 

Luke glanced over at Tor, who smiled and shrugged. He sighed. Now that they'd shared food and water, he couldn't excuse himself without offending the brothers, and he wasn't ready to depart the canyon just yet. The best he could hope for was that their holo-player was on the fritz--and judging from the lovingly tended condition of Brother Marco's battered machine when the monks unwrapped it, that wasn't likely. 

_All right, let's get this over with..._ he thought, and settled back in his seat next to Tor while the two Brothers bustled excitedly about him and the opening sequence geared up on the projector at last. _Maybe this one isn't as bad as I remember it..._

***

_Luke Skywalker and the Phoenix Women of Deshar Nebula_ turned out to be a mixed bag. It was less pornographic that Luke remembered, but it was also spectacularly boring, with plot holes big enough to hold a Star Destroyer. _How do writers come up with this crap?_ Luke thought towards the end of a very long and mind-numbing action sequence involving the titular hero surrounded by hordes of the scantily clad Phoenix Women in a swimming pool ostensibly at the heart of a secret Imperial space station. _Is this what people think I do? Is this what they want to see? Ugh._

He thought about the holo Brother Marco had mentioned earlier--the one with the red-haired dancing girl and the trained rancor. He hadn't heard of that one before, but at a guess, it was a fictional version of his time at Jabba's palace, framed as a romance. That might actually be interesting--maybe he should ask Brother Marco for the title--

He wondered if the actress resembled Mara or not. She, too, had been at Jabba's Palace at the same time, undercover as a dancing girl and on a mission from the Emperor to kill him. It was just the sort of plot that the holos loved, and he wondered if the writers had even the slightest knowledge of the facts. He guessed not--ever since he and Mara had started working together, rumors had swirled of their romantic involvement. Teaming up to run the Jedi Academy and the Yavin hot springs resort had only fanned the flames. 

It was bad enough when it was just Han and Leia teasing him in private about getting together with Mara, but to have a thousand different versions of it playing out in front of him in real time was jarring. Ever since the Mindor incident, he'd made a point of at least skimming the holos so he'd know what people were saying about him. While there were a few hilarious moments here and there, mostly the results were depressing. 

It had to be a coincidence if the actress in that film looked like Mara, he thought. It had to be-- yeah, right. Who was he kidding? Of course, she would look like Mara--at least as much as the actor in the title role resembled Luke. 

"Psst," Tor whispered, poking him in the arm, jolting him out of his reverie. "Pay attention. This is the best part." 

"Yeah, I'm a big fan of the ending myself," Luke deadpanned, as he watched a triumphant montage of a single X-wing fighter leading a trail of Phoenix Women through the stellar maze that entrapped them into freedom. He had no idea how any of them could survive in the vacuum of space without protection, but this wasn't the sort of film that concerned itself with details. 

The holo ended shortly thereafterwards with a dramatic orchestral flourish and the credits rolled. The two Brothers cheered and hummed along with the end title. Luke got up and stretched, glancing over the balcony to the canyon below. Darkness was falling rapidly, and he eyed the growing shadows with unease. Night came earlier here in the canyon than it did on the plains, and he and Tor should probably get moving if they were going to get safely back to the ship before dark--

A booming howl echoed off the rock walls behind him, so loud and unexpected he nearly jumped out of his skin as his danger instinct flared. He hadn't heard that sound in years, but he knew exactly what it meant: a canyon krayt on the prowl. 

_Well, so much for heading back to the ship now,_ Luke thought, his heart beating rapidly as the echoes faded away. 

"What was _that_?" Tor asked in the silence. Brother Amaeo was rapidly rolling up the rope ladder and tying it securely to the stone railing along the balcony. 

"Canyon krayt," Luke said. "I think we're going to have to rely on the hospitality of the Holy Brotherhood for a little longer." 

"No problem at all!" Brother Marco said cheerfully, swinging a lit glowlamp to and fro and handing another one to Tor. "This often happens on holo nights, and I am well prepared." 

He bustled the two of them further into the shelter carved out of the rock, past a makeshift kitchen and neatly organized pantry, around a corner to a little dead-end corridor, wide enough for four or five people to stretch out comfortably. There was no furniture, but heaps of bantha skin rugs were piled everywhere--more than enough for a warm and comfortable night in the desert. 

"It's not fancy, but I trust it will do?" Brother Marco asked. 

Luke and Tor both assured him it was perfectly acceptable, and the Brother left, mumbling something about evening prayers. 

"We'll have to give them something for their hospitality," Luke said, as Marco's glowlamp vanished around the corner and they were alone. 

"Already done," Tor said, setting down the glow lamp on an outcropping in the wall as she began to make a nest of bantha skins on the floor. "I gave them several hundred credits and a few ration bars before dinner. And I think I'll get them a copy of the latest Skywalker holo when we get back to the ship." 

"The one about the dancing girl and the rancor?" 

"That's the one." 

Luke sighed. "Thanks, I think." 

He set about arranging the bantha hides to suit himself, pausing now and again at the familiar smoky must that arose every time he disturbed them. The scent brought him back to his childhood, to infrequent trips to Anchorhead by speeder for supplies. Owen and Beru hadn't owned any banthas, but they were a relatively common sight in the towns and settlements, tied up outside of buildings while their owners went about their business in the marketplace. Six-year-old Luke had been fascinated with them, enough for Beru to make him a stuffed miniature version of his own out of a few scraps of hide. He'd named it Banny, and it was his favorite toy until he'd discovered krayt dragons, and after that, speeders and starships. Banny had been stuffed into the back of his closet and forgotten--and had probably burned along with everything else when the Imperial stormtroopers had shown up and slaughtered his family--

"You all right?" Tor's voice cut in. He looked up to see her leaning against the rock wall, scribbling furiously into a little notebook she'd secreted somewhere in her coveralls. 

"It's... been an odd day, that's all," he said as he poked his bedding. Satisfied with its fluff and heft, he lay down and let himself relax. "What are you doing?" 

"Field notes," Tor said. "I want to write everything down before I forget. Like you said, it's been an odd day. And it'll be good to know where we've been, in case I need to retrace my steps later." 

There didn't seem to be anything to say to this, so he let it go and closed his eyes, concentrating on an old Jedi relaxation technique to calm his mind. He was surprised when she spoke again. 

"You know, Skywalker, that was some amazing flying you did today. You should fly more often, you know. Get out, travel around, see the galaxy. Have you thought about that?" 

"That was one reason I went out with Cray and Nichos on their errantry," he admitted. "I was restless - I wanted to be on the move. I wanted some action. Yoda always chided me for that, told me it wasn't the Jedi way, but I can't seem to get it out my system. 

He hesitated, but decided to keep going, having come this far. "There's so much work to do on Yavin with the academy and I just... don't want to do any of it right now. I'm not much of an administrator or a bureaucrat. I'm just a pilot who got caught up in something bigger than myself, and I worry I can only be happy in the middle of a crisis. But I know too much to be content to shoot at the enemy and follow orders the way I used to." 

There was a long pause as Tor processed this. "You know, Yoda may have been wrong," she said at last. "Or at least not entirely right. There are trees that move. They know when to be rooted and they know when to move." 

"I've never seen a tree move," Luke protested, propping himself up on one elbow as he turned to face her. Illuminated only by the pale green glow of the lamp, her dark hair and skin blended in with the rock around them, as if she'd been swallowed by the earth itself.

"Well, you'd be surprised, it happens more than you'd think," Tor said. She shifted and the illusion shattered. "Anyway, my point is that there are different ways of being for everything, and I don't see why that wouldn't be true for Jedi as well. Yoda favored one way: the slow, the calm, the steady, the constant. But you are a different person, and you need different things. It's not wrong to love adventure, crave excitement, I think. As long as you don't let those desires get away from you, and steer you away from doing what's right, I don't see what the problem is." 

"But it's not the Jedi way--" Luke started. 

"Well, I can't speak to that part. I don't know what the Jedi way is--and neither, I think, do you, or else you wouldn't be so agitated about it. All I know is that when there's a big disturbance--say, a landslide in the mountains or a forest fire in the Yavin jungle--the plants that initially re-colonize the site aren't the same species you find in a mature forest. It takes a different set of skills to find roots in a rocky and barren place, to thrive out in the open exposed to the elements. These colonizers create the shade and shelter for other plants to grow, and in time, a forest emerges--different from what was, but still beautiful and complete in its own way. Different plants emerge at different stages and need different things, but I don't know if I would consider certain kinds to be fundamentally better than others, at least on an objective level." 

"Is there a point to this?" She'd lost him with the botanical metaphor. 

"Only that the skills it takes to be a pioneer and break new ground may be different from the skills it takes to follow in the footsteps of a well-trodden path. And you might not have to choose between your happiness and your work, especially as others emerge to take over." 

"But I still want to be involved--" Luke started. 

"It's just something to think about, all right? And maybe ease up on yourself a little. If you want to fly, you can fly. You just have to find a way to make it work around everything else, that's all." 

"All right," he said, grateful for the chance to change the subject. He didn't want to admit how uncomfortable her words made him feel. "In the morning, I'll climb up to the top of the canyon and take a look around. The krayts should be long gone by then and so should any pursuit. We ought to be able to continue on our way without incident. From the sound of it, the local crime boss just wanted to squeeze us for some easy credits. Probably some Hutt who muscled in here after Jabba died." 

"I hate Hutts," Tor said. "They ruined their own homeworld and think they can pull the same trick elsewhere. As soon as they finish with Nal Hutta, they'll be off to find another planet and repeat the whole business." 

"Not that there's much of _this_ planet to degrade," Luke said, rolling over on his back and staring up at the ceiling. 

"You'd be surprised. Compared to Nal Hutta, this is paradise," Tor said. She closed her notebook and it vanished into a pocket. "At least you can walk around in the open air without suffocating from the toxic gas."

"I guess." He'd been to Nar Shaddaa once on a very memorable occasion, but they hadn't lingered long enough to sightsee, let alone make it down to the planet. 

"Speaking of which, Skywalker, I believe there's a story you need to continue," Tor said. She flicked off the glowlamp, plunging them into darkness. 

Luke groaned inwardly, realizing he should have seen this one coming. He was equally surprised to realize he was looking forward to answering, and that the resistance that had overwhelmed him earlier in the day was oddly absent. 

"All right," he agreed, making himself as comfortable as he could in his makeshift bed. "Where was I? Oh, right, Cray and Nichos's memorial service..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The staff kata in this chapter are based on those developed for the _jo_ weapon in aikido, while Tor's martial arts are a cross between aikido and Shaolin kung-fu. 
> 
> Tor's marriage to a tree is a reference to a conversation in the as-yet unpublished JAT fix-it fic that details her first meeting with Luke, but it's based on a real phenomenon in India, in which women are ceremonially married to trees to ward off ill-luck or other negative effects, before marrying their "real" husband. In Tor's case, it circumvents the prohibition that unmarried laywomen are not permitted on Akkan-ji's monastery grounds. 
> 
> ""Form does not differ from emptiness / Emptiness does not differ from form. Feelings, perceptions, formations are also like this." is a line from the [Heart Sutra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra). 
> 
> "Vast emptiness--nothing holy, and yet everything holy," is derived from [Case One](https://sites.google.com/site/robertaitkenroshi/home/content/bluecliff1) of the _Blue Cliff Record_ , a collection of Zen koans. 
> 
> The Miraki air-plants are based on [_Tillandsia_ species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillandsia). 
> 
> Both Legends and nu!canon ecology for Tatooine make no sense, a fact I've lampshaded in Tor's dialogue. The business with banthas is just the tip of the iceberg. I've taken some liberties to make things more ecologically valid, but YMMV.


	4. Chapter 4

The ritual began at sunset, after the day's work and lessons were over and the guests had finished their dinner. Kyp summoned the students to the Great Temple by slamming a wooden mallet against the _han_ \--a board suspended in the air by two thick durasteel chains outside the entrance--in a series of complex patterns. Dressed in formal robes, they trickled in pairs and trios past him into the meditation hall. 

Mara had arranged cushions in a circle on the dark cold stone at the center of the room, and stood by the entrance to direct everyone to their seats as they filed into the doorway. Luke's place was his usual seat in front of the altar, Mara on his right and Callista at his left. Aerial and the four other new students were on Callista's left, followed by all other students order of seniority all the way to Kam, Tionne and Corran on Mara's right. Callista's position, like her presence at the Academy, occupied an odd grey area: neither full apprentice nor guest, a part of the community and yet separate from it. It was an improvisation, and Luke hoped, a temporary one. 

This was only the second memorial service since the Academy's founding. The first had been improvised on the spot after Gantoris's death at Exar Kun's hand a year earlier to stabilize the shocked and grieving students, an outlet for anger and pain that might fester if kept hidden. Luke had hoped there would be little need for it again - even one death was far too many for their fledgling community. 

Cray had adamantly refused to hold one for Nichos after his transfer, insisting that he hadn't died, only transitioned to a different form. Sensing the absurdity of such a gesture, Luke had been all too relieved to let it pass. He'd never dreamed that a year later they would _both_ be gone, or that it would be Cray's fate, rather than Nichos's, that would cause so many problems (no, not problems, he chided himself, _challenges_ , that was better) for the living. 

The only solution was to lay everything out in the open and hide nothing, leave no shadows where rumor or gossip could hide. The students had to say good-bye to Cray before they could accept Callista as she was. 

When everyone had arrived and it was time for the ceremony to begin, Kyp finished his hammering and came into the hall to join them. The only sound was the loud grating of stone on stone as he closed the door behind him, and the soft padding of his bare feet against the floor. He settled himself gracefully onto his cushion next to Cilghal with a practiced flare, releasing the ties that kept the long curves of his sleeves out of his way with a typically dramatic flourish. 

They sat together in the circle facing each other for a long time to let their minds settle and steady. Luke felt Callista, still unused to physical embodiment, shift slightly, though her mind was calm; Mara was still and silent on his right, her expression and her thoughts unreadable. 

Luke regretted there had been no time for a soak in the hot springs before the ceremony - he was tired and tense and feeling the ache of both now. He shook his head, and let go of his responsibilities and concerns, and let himself fall clear and open in the silence, surrounded by the familiar presences around him. He was aware of every knot in his back, his shoulders, overwhelmed by the pain of it them-- and then between one moment and the next, he was awake and present and clear as he grounded himself in the present moment. He still ached, but his focus had shifted; all his stories dropped away. 

He opened his eyes, gazed for a moment at the people in the circle. They were all family, of sorts, though a very differt family than that of blood and birth, or the tighter, deeper bonds he shared with Han and Leia. Though they wore the same rust-colored robes, their individual personalities shone through in their posture and the way they carried themselves. There was Kirana Ti, fierce and proud, her back straight and her head high; Streen, who slumped when his concentration slipped; Cilghal, calm and placid; and Kyp, whose bright adamantine energy had been channeled and tempered into newfound maturity under Mara's tutelage. Dorsk 81, Kam, Tionne, Corran, Mara, Callista--each one of them was a shining star in the expanding and shifting constellation of the New Jedi Order, and he was proud of them. 

The new students radiated very different energies. Aerial the Rodian, timid and shy, crouched down next to Wedan, the Chadra-Fan, confused and concerned, while G'ata the Bith blinked her large eyes in uncertainty. None of them had known Cray and Nichos well, and this particular ceremony was new and strange to them. Luke feared it was not an auspicious beginning to their time at the Jedi Temple, yet it couldn't be helped. To be a Jedi required an acceptance of death, both of oneself and of others, rather than turning away in avoidance. He'd prefer that lesson come much later in their training, but--fate and circumstances had taken a different turn, and here they were. 

As with Gantoris, Luke spoke first. He told the assembly of Cray and Nichos's arrival at the Academy, of the pride in Nichos's face when he spoke of his lover. _'The most brilliant AI programmer at the Magrody Institute—and strong in the Force as well_ ', Nichos claimed, and he had not exaggerated. The two of them had breezed through the preliminary exercises with ease, damp with sweat and laughing in the Yavin heat as they trained side-by-side. Luke spoke of his joy in their joy, his delight in their stability and even temper and good sense, how they shielded each other's back and balanced their strengths. 

He spoke of their love for each other, of Cray's determination to save Nichos when he was diagnosed with fatal Quannot’s Syndrome. How she wedded her skills with cybernetics and the Force to create a new body for him; how courageous Nichos had been to detach from his failing body and survive, though he lost his own Force skills in the process. 

Luke saw Callista frown at this, but it was too late to take the words back. Hurriedly, he changed the subject to safer ground: his decision to accompany Cray and Nichos on their first errantry to Ithor, the mysterious signal they had detected in the Moonflower Nebula, his decision to investigate. 

"It was my decision, and they agreed to come with me," he said, meeting the eyes of every being around the circle in turn. "I take full responsibility for what happened next." 

He told them of the _Huntbird_ , shot out of the sky by a hidden foe; their crash-landing on the planet Pzob; and their subsequent conscription by the _Eye of Palpatine_ , its automated, insane computer guidance system bent on carrying out a pre-programmed mission of destruction as a result of Irek Ismaren's summons. He told them of Cray's capture at the hands of indoctrinated Gamorreans; of Nichos's helplessness in his new droid body; of his own meeting with Callista's spirit in the ship's core. 

He glossed over Cray's torture, and her outrage at Nichos for obeying his programmed restraining bolt when she cried to him for help. Nor did he discuss his own private conversations with Callista, the dreams that were more than dreams they'd shared, and his own fantasies of preserving the ship in some fashion to save her life. Instead, he spoke of Nichos's decision to sacrifice himself to destroy the _Eye of Palpatine_ and prevent a holocaust--and Cray's decision to surrender her body to Callista's spirit so she could follow her lover into death. 

"They tricked me," he admitted sheepishly to his students, to his colleagues, to his friends, knowing it would shock the ones who still believed in the Infallible Jedi Master schtick. "I would never have agreed to it otherwise. They ambushed me and dumped me in an escape pod and I woke up too far away and too late to stop them. 

"It was their choice and I honor it--and yet a part of me wishes that I had died in their place. I would not be here before you without their sacrifice, their bravery, their courage, their dedication, and their love. And neither would Callista." 

He nodded in her direction, saw her biting her lip to keep herself from sobbing as he spoke. He put his hand on hers, knowing that everyone saw him do it and what it meant. 

"We owe them both our lives, and I honor them for it. Though they were on their first errantry, I considered them to be Jedi Knights in all but name even before we set out for Ithor, and their actions on the _Eye of Palpatine_ proved it. I don't have to wish for the Force to be with them, because I know that it is, and they are now a part of it forever and always." 

He took a deep breath. "A Jedi's life isn't easy. Any of you may be called upon one day to make the same choice they did, and that isn't easy knowledge for me to bear. Yet Cray and Nichos died as they lived--and they lived fully. That, at least, I can take comfort it. 

"But I miss them," he whispered. "I miss them so much." 

Silence met his words. All eyes were on him. There was only one thing left to say, the phrase to end his part in this and pass the torch to the next speaker. 

"Cray Mingla and Nichos Marr--may the Force be with you. Always." 

Callista, sitting on Luke's left, ought to be next, but instead he gestured to Aerial that the floor was hers. Stuttering and stammering at the attention, Aerial did her best to comply. 

As he'd expected, the new students had barely known Cray or Nichos, but their stories, though brief, were moving. They spoke of their awe at Cray's skill with the Force, their envy at her ease, their gratitude at small kindnesses--directions to the meditation hall, a suggestion to shift posture at just the right moment, a helping hand in moments of frustration and need, a graceful tap with the Force to trigger an insight. Luke learned that even after his droid-conversion, Nichos had been a steadying presence in the meditation hall, and that Cray had helped G'ata build some eye protection to help her handle the Yavin sun. Small things, yes, and yet so meaningful to those who received them. 

Then came the students who had known Cray and Nichos longer. Patterns began to emerge, as threads connected and themes overlapped. Nichos, young, handsome, kind, inspiring, clever, even-tempered, passionately in love with Cray. Cray: persistent, armed with a determination that bordered on stubborness at the wrong moments, devoted, dedicated, fantastically brilliant in her chosen field; beautiful, but unaware of it, and unafraid to get her hands dirty. Some stories made the assembly laugh and some made them cry, but they all ended with the same wish: "May the Force be with you, always." 

By the time they got to Tionne, everyone was weeping more or less openly. Even Mara looked teary, though Luke suspected she'd deny it if he asked her about it later. 

"Cray was a dear friend," Tionne began. "So kind. So beautiful. So talented. I was--so jealous of her at first, but she never looked down on me, never treated me as less worthy because she was stronger than I was in the Force. We stayed up together and talked and talked--and I will never forget those long nights during Nichos's illness, where I begged her to rest and take care of herself and she refused, so desperate was she to find a cure. I thought of her as a sister, and I--refused to believe she was gone when I first heard the news. It didn't occur to me that she could just be--gone."

Tionne straightened her slumping shoulders as she rallied herself. "I promise you all, I will not let Cray and Nichos be forgotten. Generations from now, the Jedi will sing of their victory against the _Eye of Palpatine_ and mourn their loss along with us. They will be remembered. This I vow, for I will write their story myself.

"Cray Mingla and Nichos Marr," she said, clasping her hands in front of her heart. "May the Force be with you both--always." 

Corran, who had been personally instructing Nichos before his illness, offered a different take. "I never knew Cray well, but it wasn't surprising to me that Nichos was unafraid to die. He'd already died once, in his own way, and I think that was far scarier to him than any blaster bolt could be. He--struggled with his identity after his transfer, unclear if he was still himself, still human, or only a simulacra of one. I couldn't help him with his dilemma, but I think he found his answer on the _Eye of Palpatine_ \--and with it, a kind of peace that had eluded him. Life dealt him a nasty hand, and he played it well. I hope I would have done as well in his shoes. May the Force be with him--with both of them. I'll miss him very much." 

Then it was Mara's turn. 

"Cray and Nichos were not my students, but I honor their actions and their sacrifices as if they were my own," she said. "Like Corran, I hope I would have done as well in their place had our situations been reversed. As a former agent of the Empire, I feel so much rage and grief for their deaths, so much unnecessary suffering and so much pain as a result of the schemes of a man long dead. But I take comfort in the fact that I was able to do what I could to help--and that I was able to bring Roganda Ismaren and her son to justice at last. Their deaths will not be in vain. There will be no more suffering as a result of that dreadnought or its masterminds. And I take what comfort I can in that." 

Knowing Mara's distate for the expression, Luke was surprised when she added, after a long pause, "May the Force be with them." 

The last person to speak was Callista. She had been weeping silently ever since Luke's speech, and he wasn't sure if she would be able to handle the pressure now. But she gathered herself visibly under his gaze, and faced the circle of grieving Jedi bravely. 

"I only knew Cray for a few hours, and yet in some ways, I know her better than any of you here," she began. "What we shared in that short time on the _Eye of Palpatine_ together brought me closer to her than any human being I've ever known. She knew me, all of me, trapped in the computer core, and even in the midst of her pain and grief and her determination to destroy the dreadnought, she had enough compassion to ensure that I would not go down with it. She offered me her body, she stood aside and walked into the dark after Nichos, down a road I couldn't follow. 

"She didn't have to do that. She could have gotten into the escape pod and ran. She chose to save me instead. It was her idea, not mine; we had no idea whether or not it would even work. Every second of my existence, every breath I take, I owe to her. I owe her a debt I can never repay, and never will be able to repay because she's gone. But I can do what I can to help others. I can fulfill the vows I took as a Jedi to save all beings. I can _live_. I can honor her life by living mine to the fullest." 

"In some ways, this ceremony has been like watching my own funeral," Callista admitted with a laugh. "I know Cray so well, and yet in some ways, she's a stranger to me; I never saw her the way you did, never got to know her as a fellow student and friend. I wear her body, and yet I'm not her, and I can never be her. For better or worse, I can only be me. And I'm still struggling to find out what that means now that so much has changed." 

She took a deep, struggling breath. "Thirty years ago, I was a Jedi Knight, a student of Master Djinn Altis of Bespin. Since then, everyone I knew was slaughtered by the Empire, and the Republic I vowed to protect is gone. Like Nichos, I lost my ability to use the Force when I came to this new body. I am a stranger in a strange place, and everything I knew from before is lost, even the Force. I--I hope--I can be a Jedi again. But Luke said--Luke said--there would be a place for me here as I am if I wanted it, no matter what happens.

"I hope--you'll accept me. I hope--you'll understand that although I look like her, I'm not Cray and never will be." She swallowed. "But I do want to honor her sacrifice--by taking on a part of her name as well as my own. 

"Thirty years ago, I was Callista Masana. Now I am Callista Ming." A slight smile, as flicker of her old humor emerged as she bowed. "Pleased to meet all of you. I hope you can catch me up on everything I've missed.

"Cray Mingla and Nichos Marr--may the Force be with you always. And thank you. For everything."

****

The ceremony worked, as Luke hoped--Callista was accepted into the community despite the awkward circumstances, and life went on. Other problems were not so easily solved. 

"I don't understand it," Cilghal said privately to him, after she'd had the opportunity to examine Callista more thoroughly. "As far as I can determine, she's perfectly healthy, with no problems I can detect. She's alive, and she registers with the Force as much as any other human, Force-sensitive or not. But I have no idea why she can no longer access the Force in this new body." 

"Nichos lost his abilities when he transferred bodies," Luke said. "Is that an inevitable part of the process? Callista said that everything has a price." 

Cilghal shook her head. "Nichos's spirit moved to a droid, which could never access the Force. Callista's spirit moved to another Jedi's body, with Cray's consent--so what happened to block her? I see nothing physical to prevent it." 

"You think it's a mental thing, then?" Luke asked hopefully. If that were the case, then perhaps they could trigger a breakthrough.

"I don't know," Cilghal admitted. "I've never seen anything like this before. Tionne hasn't found any similar cases in her research, and Callista hasn't, either. I suppose it's possible it could be an unconscious reaction, but if so, I don't know how to treat it. I'm sorry, Master Skywalker.

"It's not your fault, but I appreciate your sympathy," he corrected gently. "I know you did your best. It's just... difficult to accept that this is how it is now." 

"I know it pains you to see her struggle," Cilghal said. "I hope there is a way to find balance for both your sakes." 

Luke sighed. Evidently, he wasn't as good at concealing his emotions as he thought he was--but then again, Cilghal was a diplomat, and more skilled than most at reading his expressions. "So do I, Cilghal. So do I." 

***

"Graft incompatibility," Tor's voice interrupted out of the darkness. 

"What?" Luke asked, startled by the sudden intrusion. 

"Graft incompatibility," she repeated. "That's what _I_ think happened, anyway." 

"And what does that mean, exactly?" 

"Grafting is a common horticultural technique in which a branch of one plant is affixed to the trunk of a different one--maybe a different variety of the same species, or maybe another species entirely. If done correctly, the two merge together seamlessly as a whole, yet retain their separate characteristics. But in order for it to work properly, the roots and the branch can't be _too_ far removed genetically from each other." 

"What does this have to do with Callista?" 

"I'm getting to that," Tor said patiently. "The human immune system is set up to recognize foreign invaders, yes? To do that, the body has to be able to recognize itself, so it doesn't accidentally attack its own tissues by mistake. I think that Cray's body knew on an organic level that Callista's spirit didn't belong there, and was fighting her. All of Callista's Force abilities were spent holding her there in that body and keeping her alive, leaving no energy for anything else. 

Luke thought about this for a moment. "This would explain why the Emperor Reborn came back in clones of his old body," he said at last. "Because those bodies--recognized his spirit on some level as being the same. Otherwise, he would have come back without his Force powers." 

"That's my theory, anyway," Tor agreed. "Not that it's ethical to experiment, of course." 

"Right." He thought for a moment. "Did you mention this Callista?" 

Tor shrugged. "She never asked. And I wasn't sure it would help. Some things--you have to figure out on your own."

"What _did_ you tell her, then?" Callista and Tor has spoken privately during their brief overlap at the academy, right before Callista's departure. At the time, he hadn't thought anything of it, but now--

"I told her what I've said to you before--that I've never thought of Force-sensitivity as an absolute binary, yes/no state, but as a continuum that every living and non-living being contributes to and participates in to some degree. Even beings who can't consciously manipulate it on command as the Jedi do still have access to it, particularly in times of high stress. 

"Without trying to minimize her loss--which was a genuine tragedy--I told her that she had a choice of how to see herself. Was she a victim, or a survivor? Was she broken forever, or was this only a temporary setback in the story of her life? Did her identity as a Jedi define her, or was she more than that?

"And," Tor continued, "for the record, I also told her that I suspected that an individual's sensitivity could vary widely due to unresolved trauma, training, overall mental health and surrounding environment. In case, you know, you're looking to blame me for her departure." 

"I wasn't--" Luke started as his temper flared, betraying the lie and forcing him to stop before he said something he would regret. He took a deep breath, and counted to twenty-five in his head to let his emotions settle down--neither pushing them away, nor getting caught up in them. 

"Of course," Tor said into the silence, "I'm not a Jedi, so what do I know about any of this?" 

"The Jedi certainly don't have a monopoly on wisdom and compassion," Luke said. "At least I don't." 

"You have more of both than you give yourself credit for," Tor said. "But I agree, this particular situation has been trying for everyone." 

"It wasn't all bad," Luke said. "Not at first, anyway. But yes, even then, there were problems..." 

***

As painful as it was for Luke to see Callista's chagrin and disappointment over her absent powers, Luke had his own challenges. His physical wounds from the _Eye of Palpatine_ had long since healed, but he found himself walking with a limp, dragging his left foot behind him. Once he'd gotten used to pipes and engine tape to keep him functioning--with the corresponding drain on his mobility--it was hard to remember to stop doing it. 

The hot springs helped. He spent a lot of time there, occasionally in the men's section with the students and guests, but mostly in the more secluded pool they'd reserved for the teachers. 

Callista hesitated when he brought her there for the first time, but he'd overruled her, arguing that she had thirty years of experience over the rest of them, and they were learning just as much from her as she was from them, even if she couldn't physically demonstrate most of what she taught. Callista laughed, and followed him in, and no one challenged her right to be there, not that there were all that many people using it these days. With Corran preferring to abstain from social bathing and Tor away in the field, it was usually empty. Kam and Tionne still bathed in the communal pools, and Mara came and went on her own schedule. So they had the place to themselves, which was helpful on days when nothing else seemed to go right. 

Traitakh, the Noghri in charge of the dojo, took one look at Luke as he limped into the dojo his first week back and sniffed, the single gesture speaking volumes. "Would the Son of Vader care to visit a medic before resuming practice?" was all he said aloud. "This one will not go easier on account of those injuries." 

"Yes, yes," Luke waved, acknowledging the rebuke as he brought himself into a stance for unarmed combat. He'd tried for years now to convince the Noghri to drop the patronym, and failed; they were far more stubborn than he was about it. It was easier to ignore the title, even if it did disturb the new students who weren't already aware of his heritage. 

For three years, Traitakh had been teaching Luke a modified version of the Noghri combat forms, which focused on swift and lethal takedowns no matter the size, reach or weaponry of the opponent. To make the practice even more challenging, Luke insisted on hanging enough ysalamiri around the dojo to obliterate his Force sense and create an effective handicap for himself. The Empire under Thrawn had thought they could catch him off-guard without the Force; Luke was determined to prove them wrong should they ever try a similar tactic again in the future. It was easy sometimes--too easy--to coast, to let his heightened senses compensate for sloppiness or imprecise technique. 

The irony of spending so much time training his body so he could use the Force, only to turn around and train _without_ it didn't escape him, but he refused to let that stop him. It also gave him insight into Callista's situation, and what she had experienced every since her resurrection in Cray's body. He wasn't sure whether he was so determined to prove that the Force wasn't everything to her--or to himself. 

Though he would have 'lost' both times against a real opponent, it felt good to fight again without having to worry about hurting anyone. Traitakh complimented him on his progress, a rare occurence even in the best of times. 

He was halfway to the baths when he realized he was no longer limping. Somehow, in the heart of combat, he'd forgotten he was supposed to be injured and had just responded in the moment--even without the Force. 

_Maybe that's something we can do for Callista,_ he thought, filing that tidbit away for future reference. It was something, anyway, even if he wasn't quite sure how to apply it yet. 

But every now and then, he noticed himself slipping back into a limp if he wasn't careful, favoring his right side out of habit. And it didn't stop the ache that spread through his leg at times, as if his body couldn't forget the trauma that had been forced on it so easily. 

Despite the fact that Callista had more or less moved into his quarters, and there were always someone vying for his attention, he was surprisingly lonely. Mara was always busy these days--while she was polite enough when their paths crossed or if he came to her with a business question, she snapped at him whenever the conversation moved in a personal direction. Corran was prickly and obtuse even at the best of times, and anything without a solution made him grumpy; Luke knew better than to confide in him on this. Kam and Tionne looked up to him as a senior teacher; he didn't think it would be helpful for them to know how fragile his control was. And it was hard to confess his own doubts to Callista, especially when she was wracked by her own and looking to him for support. 

Not for the first time, he wished Tor was around. She was out in the jungle somewhere with a cadre of graduate students, unlikely to return until the end of the dry season. She'd left a summoning beacon in his office in case an emergency, and sometimes he found himself handling it, tempted to pull the trigger, but he never did. She had her own work and he had his and to pull her back just so he could have someone to talk to seemed entirely out of proportion.

Ever since his escape from the _Eye of Palpatine_ , he'd been haunted by nightmares. They'd eased up during his time on Coruscant, and he'd congratulated himself on the worst being over--only for them to rescume with a vengeance upon his return to Yavin. 

Every night it was the same: he woke gasping and sweating, primed for a fight, not knowing where he was for a few seconds until his memory returned. Now and then, he'd find himself tangled and sweaty in the sheets, startled to find himself in bed next to Cray--only to realize in the next heartbeat that it was actually Callista beside him. 

Once in such a state, he slipped and called out, "Cray?" -- only to realize his mistake in the next breath. She flinched beside him, as if he'd slashed at her with a lightsaber instead of words. 

His cheeks colored with shame. "I'm sorry," he whispered, reaching out to hold her. "Callista. I'm sorry. It was a dream. I'm so sorry." 

She let him hold her, acknowledging his apology, and pretending that it hadn't hurt as much as it did. He knew better. She was still sensitive to people mistaking her for Cray, or blaming her for Cray's death. The memorial service had helped the other students to avoid Tionne's initial mistake, and yet the slightest hint of confusion could send Callista spiraling downwards into depression. 

But he, of all people, ought to know better. Even if he'd been disoriented, there was no mistaking Cray for Callista, once you knew what to look for. They wore the same face, but their voice, their eyes, their posture, their _spirits_ were different. 

He knew Callista better than he'd known any other being in his life, and yet there were gaps between them, wide chasms in their knowledge and experience and expectations that he had no idea even existed until circumstances forced them to the surface. 

"I still find it jarring that your sister is married to Captain Solo," Callista admitted him one evening as they readied for bed. 

"Why, you think he's too much of a scoundrel for a princess?" Luke asked, pulling his shirt over his head with a laugh. 

"No, no. I think he's charming. He's just... not a Jedi, and she has the potential for it, even if she hasn't formally trained. It's just--odd, that's all." 

"It's certainly not common," Luke agreed, "but becoming more so by the day as more Force users come out of the woodwork. Take Corran, for instance." 

"Corran is _married_?" she repeated in shock. 

"Hard to imagine, I know," Luke said dryly. "But yes, he's married. They even have a son. You'll probably meet Mirax at some point--she drops by occasionally--but mostly she's busy with her own business. She's a trader--like Mara used to be before coming to the Academy with me." 

"She's not a Jedi?" Callista said, her eyes wide. 

"No," Luke said slowly. "Why does it matter?" 

"Well, I'm just--not used to that sort of thing," Callista said. "I know it happened between Captain Solo and your sister, but--I hadn't realized there were others. And your sister never formally trained, even if she had the talent, so that made sense. But Corran is a teacher here. That's different." 

"I thought you said that Jedi in your order were encouraged to marry?" Luke said. 

"Oh!" Callista laughed nervously. "Yes, that's true. But most of the relationships were between Jedi in the order, or at least between two Force-sensitives, regardless of their levels of training. Like me and Geith," she said, alluding to the partner who had gone for help when confronted with the _Eye of Palpatine_ , only to be shot down by the dreadnought while she watched in horror. "It was very rare for anyone to pair off with someone who wasn't...at least a little talented." 

"Oh," Luke said. There was something else in the surprise that had flickered across her face for a moment, but he wasn't sure what it was. 

"Is that why you want to get your powers back? Because it wouldn't be okay for us to be together without them in your tradition?" That made sense, even if he didn't agree with it. 

"Oh!" Callista looked embarrassed. "Yes, well--I know you think it's silly, Luke, but I just--I'm still not used to how things are done here. I'm sorry." 

"No, no, it's fine," Luke said. "I understand. And you know--we do things differently now. It's all right. You are whole and complete, just the way you are, and I love you. It's _you_ I love, not the Force in you." 

"But it's not--I mean, the sex--the union--" 

He knew what she was talking about--the dreams that hadn't been dreams on the Eye of Palpatine, the visions they'd shared, the experiences that weren't physical yet no less real because of it. She'd walked in his memories and he in hers, buoyed and unified by their connection to the Force. "I mean--that was nice, what we had then. It was _really_ nice. But it's not--something I need to be happy with you. You are perfect just the way you are," he said, reaching up to stroke her cheek. 

"Even if I could use a little improvement," she retorted playfully, her humor restored, as she batted his hands away from her face and down her neck. 

"Don't we all," he agreed, yielding to her entreatries. "It's not a problem for me, Callista. I hope it's not a problem for you." 

"No," she said. "It's not." 

He didn't need the Force to know she was lying, but he said nothing. Whatever it was that was bothering her, she'd share it when she was ready. He chose to trust her. 

***

Despite the low points, there was an idyllic quality to those bright, humid days of Yavin summer that no amount of pain could eclipse. Given the chance to live his life over again, there was much he would not change. 

True to his promise, a few days after their arrival, he took Callista to see the pair of uneti trees he and Tor had planted in the central courtyard. They were hard to miss, and Tionne had included them in her original tour, but Luke felt compelled to introduce Callista to them himself. 

Despit the damage Kyp had wrecked on the trees during his flirtation with the dark side, the trees had recovered rapidly. He had hacked apart the trunk of one tree so thoroughly with a stolen lightsaber that Luke had given it up for dead at first. True to Tor's predictions, a thicket of lush, vigorous green shoots emerged from the wreckage and were now almost as tall as Luke himself. In trying to destroy one tree, Kyp had created an entire grove of them. The irony was not lost on anyone. 

Fortunately, Kyp had been interrupted in time to prevent such severe pruning on the second uneti tree. As a result, it still posessed a central leader with an upright, pyramidal structure, and was five meters tall, with no signs of slowing down. The only evidence of Kyp's rampage were the long, thick scars running up and down the trunk at intervals, exposing the scented red sapwood underneath. Many of the smaller wounds had completely healed over, marked by lumps and bulges in the thick, stringy red-brown bark. 

The recuperative power and vigor of trees never failed to amaze Luke, but the uneti trees were blessed with certain characteristics that compensated for such severe trauma. 

"Lucky for us, they resprout from the base, and they grow like weeds when they find a place they like," Tor had said to him before his departure for Ithor, surveying their growth with profound satisfaction. "And they like it here very much." 

"They like you," he said. It wasn't flattery. The trees told him as much, whispers of thoughts and images at the back of his mind, whenever he was around them. They liked him, too, showering sparkling tendrils of sunlight and sensation towards him whenever he approached, but it wasn't the same as what they felt for Tor. 

Tor smiled. "They like _you_ , too. All of you." She glanced around conspiratorily and bent to whisper in his ear, "Well, _most_ of you." 

It was true. Trees didn't experience emotions in the same way that human did - hatred was a foreign concept - but their images for Kyp were always the same: a searing brand of fire in the darkness, the branch-breaker, the witherer, the black storm that ripped away years of growth in an instant and offered nothing in return. They did not curse him, but they did not accept him, either. Kyp's grief and remorse at their rejection was genuine and heartfelt, but there was nothing to be done except wait and see if their attitude would change with time. 

He explained this to Callista as they approached the two trees, or tried to. She was distracted, listening to his stories with half an ear as she stretched for something beyond the range of her senses - and didn't find it. 

"You saw uneti trees before?" he asked her gently, hoping to distract her. 

"Just once in person," she said, acknowledging her failed efforts with a rueful smile. "There was a grove on Nijaa VII outside the Jedi outpost there. I went there once with Master Altis. I had never seen anything like it before or since, and I was entranced." 

"I know what you mean," Luke agreed. "The day Yoda took me to the ancient uneti on Dagobah as part of my training was one of the best days of my life." 

"But I wish I could hear them," she said, staring at the trees with such intensity that Luke felt embarrassed, as if his presence alone was invading her privacy. "I remember their voices in my head...and how they called out to me..." 

"These trees are still very young, and they don't understand language well," Luke cautioned. "I don't have conversations with them in the same way I could with the ancient tree on Dagobah." 

"Language is overrated. But words all I have to offer now," Callista said sadly, as they arrived before the larger tree. She took a deep breath and faced it, bowing slightly. 

"Hello," she said quietly when she raised her head. "I'm glad to be here with you. It's good to see you growing so well." 

On impulse, Luke took her hand in his. Together, they reached out to touch the trunk, keeping their fingers entwined as they spread their palms against the rough, fibrous red bark, and waited. 

A slow, questioning ripple filtered in his mind as the tree registered their presence. 

"Hello. I'm back," he said--out loud for Callista's benefit, but translating those words into images and feelings as best he could for the trees. "I know it's been a while. I hope you're well. I wanted you to meet my... partner Callista." 

Uneti trees were sentient, but their minds were vastly different from any being Luke had encountered in his varied and checkered career. Their sense of self was far more diffuse and porous than his, and it was easy to get lost in a tangle of roots if he let himself get carried away. Their sense of kinship, too, was diffuse - self/other already blended together enough that like-self and less-like-self were not as important to them as they were to more mobile creatures. _Partner_ was the closest he was going to get to describe his relationship with Callista, or maybe _other-self_ , which was awkward in Basic. There were no easy equivalents in the tree's world for beings that came together only to come apart again and maintain their own separate space and identities in the process. 

Still, they were curious and friendly and open to new ideas, new beings, new concepts. Plants, Luke had quickly learned, were unfailing optimists, no matter the odds. 

For a few breaths, all was quiet as the trees processed what he had offered them. Then soft, swirling tendrils of sensation returned, first from the larger tree, then from its bushier cousin, as the trees shared with him their experience of their integration with their place in the cosmos, their roots striving valiantly downward in the darkness through the soil towards the volcanic bedrock, formed by the roiling, molten core of the planet and the tremendous heat and pressure that sustained it. Simultaneously, Luke was pulled upward, through trunk and branch and leaf, out through the temples and the surrounding jungle with all its myriad life-forms up through the sky, out past the atmosphere where the great red eye of the gas giant Yavin hovered in the sky above them, and the myriad moons danced in elliptical orbits, and the bright yellow glow of the system's only star pulsed the light that made all life possible. And he wasn't separate from the trees, he was a part of them, and neither was the woman at his side; they were together, and they were one being, and yet they remained completely, wholly, fully themselves. 

Luke knew that if Callista could perceive what he was experiencing, she wouldn't worry about her abilities anymore. She would know, deep in her core, that she was enough. He hoped she could _feel_ it somehow, even if she wasn't conscious of it. 

"What do they say?" Callista asked. "Luke, you're crying. What's wrong?" 

"They say 'welcome home'," he whispered, his eyes blurring with tears as he opened his mouth to explain further, and no sound came out, only a ragged gasp. 

She was crying, too, and he let go of her hand and took her in his arms, leaning against the strong, bolstering trunk of the uneti tree as they cried together, as the pain and sorrow that had plagued them fell away, and they were together with the trees, right where they needed to be, at the very center of the universe, the small still point where everything was calm and right. 

A faint breeze wafted through the courtyard in the afternoon heat, brushing feathery leaves from the lower branches against his skin, no different from Callista's hot breath on his neck and the soft whisper in his mind: _Welcome, welcome home._

It was one of the best memories of his time on Yavin with her. Callista had to feel it too, how good and fair and right it was for them to be together there, nothing missing, nothing more to gain. She had to. But he never dared ask her about it later, for fear of spoiling the memory.

***

The next day he took her to the makeshift nursery Tor had set up in the central courtyard between temples. Metal benches at waist height were everywhere, and Tor had erected columns of white shadecloth in places to mimic the shelter of an overhead canopy for plants that preferred cooler microclimates. Misters dangling from the ceiling were prone to spraying everything in their surroundings without warning, and plants trailed out of their pots onto the ground, requiring them to pay close attention to their footing, lest they trip and fall. 

Tiny white labels in Tor's looping hand were in every flat, marking identities and distinctions in what appeared identical to Luke's eyes. Occasionally, she'd gotten lazy and written only a few Sawarran ideographs in place of a long stream of Botanical High Alderaani, the language of science. The labels were hard to spot in the riot of green leaves and bright-stalked flowers streaming in every direction - brilliant purple orchid plumes next to vats of water-lilies, foxtail grasses interspersed with flats of tiny pointed seedlings and melon vines. 

Tor grew anything and everything she could get her hands on that would tolerate the Yavin climate, and even then there were species from the Ramaadi and Siettar deserts intermixed with some Ve'katn bays and Muunilistan mokopods, wildly out of place with their naked spines and barrel-shaped trunks filled with hoarded water. He had no idea how she did it. 

In Luke's opinion, the most interesting plants were the tiny uneti clones Tor was growing from cuttings from the two seed-grown plants in the central courtyard. They were so small and undifferentiated they barely registered as sentient. He had to strain to hear them as they murmurred softly to each other of moisture and shadows, of the delicate flicker of roots in the potting mix as they slowly grew. 

"The watering droids take care of most of the work, but Traitakh keeps an eye on this place while Tor is away," Luke explained, as Callista brushed her fingers against the delicate plume of foliage an uneti cutting. Under her touch, a series of images moved on the edge of Luke's mind, as the twig perceived the contact as a strong breeze, and shivered in anticipation as it swayed back and forth ever so slightly. 

"She's your teacher now that Master Obi-wan and Master Yoda have passed on?" Callista asked, heedless of the reaction her movement triggered in the cutting. 

"Well-- it's complicated." It was hard to describe exactly what Tor was; she didn't fit easily into any of the usual categories. He'd shared some of his memories with Callista in dream-visions on the _Eye of Palpatine_ but he wasn't sure how to translate those experiences now that he was limited to words. "I certainly learn a lot from her. I met her when I was looking for help with the uneti tree seeds, and something just--clicked. I don't know what, but it's the same thing I felt when I was around Ben or Master Yoda. Some sort of...." 

"Presence," Callista said, lost in the distance, as if she were remembering a training session of her own, long ago. 

"Yes," he agreed. "I mean, she doesn't instruct me about the Force the way they did--her people worship it on Sawarra, but they don't use it or feel it the way the Jedi did. Do. But when I'm around her, I feel... more myself. Like I'm really me, wholly myself, without hiding or disguises. And she doesn't judge me for who I am. She's just... there." 

"I think I know what you mean," Callista said slowly. "Master Altis was like that. But I've never met anyone who could do it without some mastery of the Force." 

"Well, you'll see for yourself when she returns. I hope that will be soon. She's spending this summer out in the jungle on the far side of the moon with some graduate students, looking for new species and discoveries. But she said she'd be back for the practice intensive in the rainy season after all the guests leave. So you'll probably meet her then."

"Ah, yes, the intensive," Callista said, still in that same distracted tone of voice, as if Luke's words weren't fully registering. Then, guiltily, as if aware of her reaction, she jerked herself back to the present. "Sorry. I got lost there for a moment." 

"Don't worry about it." He stroked another uneti cutting, offering his greetings even though he wasn't sure it would understand. It was so odd to think that this tiny branch would continue to grow roots and expand to become a completely new tree--albeit genetically identical to the original. It made him think of his right hand, lost at Bespin, and the clone that had been spawned from it, and how Joruus C'baoth had twisted him so thoroughly that Mara had had to kill him to keep him from murdering Luke on Wayland. 

_If only we had been able to keep him alive. We could have helped him, healed him. But C'baoth would have killed my clone himself rather than let us save him--_

He shook his head. There he was, dwelling on the past again. Better to just be present and stop worrying about what he could not change. 

"I like this place," Callista said, looking around. "It's quiet. Peaceful. More organized than the jungle, and probably safer, too." 

"Mostly. Tor keeps all the carnivorous plants along that back row to keep them from getting too grabby. But there are snakes and beetles everywhere, so it's good to watch where you put your hands and feet." 

Beyond that row was the ysalamiri pod--a deep-netted enclosure around two metal trees Tor had painstakingly transported from Myrkr to feed her pet lizards. That whole section of the nursery was a blank bubble to Luke's senses and he quickly steered Callista away from it. He'd grudgingly accepted their presence after the debacle with Kyp two years ago, and he used them as a training tool, but he still didn't find them endearing. 

"Look!" Callista cried in delight. A pikka bird had landed on one of the larger waterlilies and was rolling itself in the golden pollen. It stirred at her cry and shook itself, sending yellow dust everywhere. It favored them with a skeptical look before taking off and vanishing back into the foliage. 

Luke smiled. "I wonder if it's heading for the baths," he said. "I would, if I were in its place." 

She laughed. "Well? Shall we take that as a sign?" 

"Indeed." If there was one rule on Yavin, it was that there was never a bad time for a soak in the hot springs. His leg throbbed. "Let's go, then." 

_Good-bye, presence,_ the uneti cuttings whispered as they moved away, accompanied by the soft imagery of rising moon and stars, the subtle tug of gravity as heavenly bodies pulled in close before veering away. To their tiny developing minds, Luke and Callista were no different from the sun or the floating red gas giant above them. 

A rough Basic translation might be, _We will see you again soon._

***

"Did you ever want to have children?" Luke asked Callista. They stood on the balcony of Luke's quarters on the upper level of the main temple, watching the sunset and waiting for the bell to ring for evening meditation. 

"I mean, yes. Someday. It just never seemed like the right time. And then the Clone Wars came and everything was in disarray, it _definitely_ wasn't the right time. And then, just as things startled to settle down--" 

"The Empire," Luke finished. 

"Yes. And after that--having children was the last thing on my mind." She played with a tendril of passionvine intent on tangling its way across the railing. 

"So now...?" Luke prompted after a long pause. 

"I don't know," Callista said at last. "I don't know--if they'd be mine or Cray's." 

"Genetically speaking, probably Cray's. But who knows? Your hair is coming back in the old color, and your voice is different from her--and so are your eyes. Given how your spirit shines through her body, I suppose there's only one way to find out." 

"Try it and see what happens?" she said, with a gleam in her eye. She turned away to look out at the view. "Well, I have to admit that scares me." 

"Why?" 

A very long pause. "What if our children inherit my Force blindness?" 

"So what?" Luke repeated. "It doesn't matter to me." 

"Shouldn't the first Jedi Master in three decades have Jedi children to follow him?" 

"I didn't think I had to personally spawn the new order myself," he said, careful to keep his tone light. "In fact, Yoda and Ben would probably hate it if I did. They didn't think that Jedi should marry and have children. My father Anakin defied the Order to marry my mother in secret. He probably would have been happier with Djinn Altis's group," he added as an afterthought. 

"Perhaps," she agreed, though she still wouldn't meet his gaze. "But I just--" 

"Anyway, Leia's children are Force-sensitive, and Han is not, so who's to say they would be Force blind? And Cray was Force-sensitive, so if you are genetically Cray, then there's no reason to assume--" 

"I guess you're right," she said, turning to face him at last. "Put that way, it sounds so cold. So clinical. So... Imperial. As if we were building a dynasty." 

"I mean, I'm not averse to the idea, but I'm also not wedded to it--" Luke started, as he leaned over to embrace her. He stopped abruptly as an idea occurred to him. "Should we get married?" he asked after a moment. 

"I don't know," she said. "I want to--Luke, truly, I do, I just--too much has happened. Too fast. I'm still getting used to it all. Let's take it slow." 

"All right," he agreed, though he couldn't deny his disappointment. Still, there was no point in rushing her. "I can do slow. After all, a Jedi is very.... very... patient." 

They both dissolved into giggles and the tension passed. 

***

The days quickly settled into a routine. Luke and Callista rose at dawn, slipping on their robes and sandals in silence and threading their way through ancient stone corridors and early morning haze to the meditation hall with the rest of the community. They sat cross-legged next to each other on dark cushions for an hour, stepping aside from the endless river of their thoughts to listen to the sound of their breath and the squawking clamor of the pikka birds announcing the return of the sun.

After breakfast, the community gathered in the central courtyard for morning announcements before splitting off for training. Since his return to Yavin, Luke had spent most of his time with Kirana Ti, coaching her as she strengthened her considerable Force powers, and answering her questions as best he could. A frequent debate was how best to adapt the Academy model to Dathomiri society when it was time for her to return to her home planet, and how to nip potential problems in the bud. 

Callista's mornings were far more varied. In the beginning, she rotated between Luke, Kam, Tionne, and Mara, working one on one with them as they tried everything they could think of to restore her connection to the Force. Luke was nervous the first time Callista and Mara worked together, but it seemed to go well; Callista reported that Mara was polite enough, if a bit standoffish. He realized later that he was disappointed that two of the most important people in his life were never going to be friends. 

Callista only tried to work with Corran once; it didn't go well. Of all the students who had trained at the Academy thus far, only Dorsk 81 and Nichos had ever had the temperament to mesh well with Corran. He was far more powerful than Tionne, but much worse at teaching--Corran admitted as much--but until they had more instructors, they were stuck with him. 

After a few weeks, at Tionne's suggestion and with Luke's blessing, Callista began to offer her own classes for the students and teachers alike. She drawing on her considerable memories of Jedi history and lore, much of which she had personally experienced. She couldn't personally assist the students in carrying out the exercises she described, but under her guidance, Luke saw the quality of instruction at the academy blossom and expand beyond his wildest dreams. It didn't bring back her connection with the Force, but it made her feel appreciated and valued, and Luke was grateful for it. 

After lunch, the community would meet again for the work assignments and chores necessary to keep everything running, from cleaning the bathhouse and guest rooms to tending the grounds to assisting the Head Cook and the kitchen droids with meal preparations. Callista threw herself eagerly into every assignment she was given. Since Force powers were rarely helpful in these sorts of work, she was more or less on even footing with the rest of the community and was rarely reminded of her loss.

Luke spent the work periods in his office, answering his messages and checking the accounts, though Mara was responsible for most of the day-to-day operations of the resort portion of the business. Corran, down the hall, managed vetting the guests and overall security, but Luke made a point to look over his shoulder now and again to know who and what to expect wandering the grounds and soaking in the baths. With several kidnapping attempts against Leia's children, it was best to be cautious. 

After the work period ended, it was time for recreation. Luke spent most of those late afternoons wandering on foot with Callista or taking his airspeeder out for a spin over the treetops. She was particularly fascinated by the complex architecture of the temple complex, and they spent many hours exploring above and below ground, marveling at the sophisticated art of a vanished civilization. 

Having spent her childhood on a raft-community on one of the vast oceans of Chad, Callista never failed to marvel at the vast forest stretching out in every direction, just as Luke had done since his first visit to Yavin when it served as headquarters for the Rebellion. Her unfailing zest for life, her laughter, her sense of humor and the absurd and the ridiculous had survived her resurrection more or less intact, and meshed neatly with his own. 

"If you don't have a sense of humor, you're dead," she told him one afternoon as they made their way back to the temple, exhausted and covered in mud, but happy.

" _You_ had a sense of humor when you were dead," he teased. 

"Not _quite_ dead," she corrected, laughing even as she said it. 

Some days, they sparred in the dojo under Traitakh's watchful eye and the blank-eyed stares of the ysalamiri on their nutrient frames. Luke was nervous about sparring with open lightsabers, but he shouldn't have been. Callista had been training in sword-forms since she was twelve; she could easily best him if he was careless, especially when he couldn't draw on the Force for help. She knew many things he didn't, and under her careful tutelage, Luke found himself improving by leaps and bounds. 

"Your style is so... rough," Callista said, after the first session. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it was 'unpolished'. Like a jewel pulled directly from the earth." 

"That's because I didn't really have a teacher," Luke explained. "Yoda and I never studied combat. I just... did what I had to do." 

"You fought Darth Vader and _lived_. How many people can claim that?" 

"I'm still not sure how I survived, to be honest. It helped that he probably wasn't trying to kill me, even at the very end." 

"I suppose so. But that doesn't make your form any less impressive under the circumstances," Callista said, stopping to stroke the rough pebbled back of a ysalamir. "Tionne doesn't like these big lizards, but I think they're cute. I've been helping Traitakh take care of them during work period sometimes, since no one else wants to do it." 

Aside from Luke, Traitakh was the only member of the community whom Callista was close to. It pained Luke that her one friend was one of the few non-Force-sensitive staff, but he held his tongue. All of the students or instructors were polite to her, but none of them--even Tionne--tried to get close. He didn't know how to bridge the gap, and wasn't sure if he could. 

After the exercise period, it was time to bathe. Callista loved the hot springs and the bathhouse, and they went every day in the late afternoon when the sun was level in the sky next to the fiery orb of the Yavin gas giant, but the shadows in the bathhouse were cool. They split up to enter the bathhouse, each washing on the side of their respective gender, only to meet up a short while later in the private teacher's pool, which they usually had to themselves. Then it was time for dinner, after which those who had foregone the afternoon work period assisted with the guests' dinner and with the meal clean-up, and then it was back to the meditation hall for another hour of silence and stillness before bed. 

In theory, Callista had inherited Cray and Nichos's quarters, but in practice, she spent her nights with Luke. And no matter how restless his sleep, it was good to wake up beside her, and hold her close until the dawn. 

***

Another joy was introducing Callista to the art and entertainment she had missed during her sojourn in the _Eye of Palpatine_ 's computer systems--which in practice, meant the last ten years in the post-Imperial censorship era. Callista repaid the favor by sharing her personal favorites with him. His retro was her present and their tastes overlapped with surprisingly regularity. And as she'd promised him once aboard ship, she did a mean imitation of Peckie Blue and the Starboys, an all-male band from Tz'uu that had topped all the galactic charts before the Clone Wars. 

"It's a skill I've always had," she said, when he expressed his surprise at the quality of her mimicry. "I listen, and... just try to imitate what I hear." She scrunched up her face, and to Luke's surprise and amazement, a perfect impression of Master Yoda issued from her mouth. "When nine hundred years _you_ reach, look this good you will _not_!" 

It was as if the voice of his old Master had spoken to him from the beyond. The illusion was so vivid that Luke blinked back sudden tears. 

"You _knew_ him?" Luke asked, shaking his head as he attempted to regain his composure. No matter how well he thought he knew Callista, she managed to surprise him on a daily basis. 

She shrugged. "Our paths crossed. He came to visit Master Altis now and then, even after Master Altis stepped away from the main order to follow his own path. He enjoyed teasing the younglings who were always hanging about, asking him to play, pretending he was too old for that sort of thing before giving them a run for their money!" 

"Did he?" It was hard to imagine Yoda cavorting at the speeds Jacen and Jaina favored -- but then Luke had never really seen his playful side. "And did you ever share your impressions with him?" 

"Oh, I thought Master Altis was going to have a heart attack in front of me, he was so surprised! But Master Yoda laughed and laughed... he thought it was so funny." Callista grinned as she spoke in Yoda's voice: "'Very good, Jedi Masana, very good. But more skill than that will it take before truly convincing you become!'" 

She switched back to the deep, husky alto of her speaking voice. "By which he meant that no one was going to mistake me for him without some sort of illusion to cover the height difference. But at least it's something I can take with me into this new life, if I decide I want a career in showbiz." 

"Oh, like Tionne?" Tionne had spent the previous week interviewing everyone involved with the _Eye of Palpatine_ in copious detail as she carried out her promise to transform the story into ballad form. 

"Tionne's interested in the history more than the performance, I think," Callista said. "She sees the music as a means to make people care about the stories. Though I am looking forward to how she spins the details. It was not all nobility and heroism, at least on my part." 

"Most battles aren't," Luke said, reaching for her shoulder. "There are some things the holos never cover. I... had no idea what I was getting into when Artoo showed up with a message from the Alliance." 

"Do you regret it?" 

"Not for a moment. I wanted more than anything to make a difference. But I wish I could been in time to save my aunt and uncle, or at least have said good-bye. They didn't deserve what happened to them." 

***

Tionne announced the next morning that she had finished composing her ballad and hoped to perform it for the community soon. Luke glanced at Mara, who rolled her eyes and looked away. This was the opportunity to revive an old debate between them on a surprisingly controversial subject: Talent Night. 

"I can't believe you want to do this again," Mara said to him and Corran when they met during the work period. 

"Mara, we've been over this before," Luke said. "It's a community bonding ritual--" 

"A complete and total waste of time, you mean--"

"--and it makes the students so happy--it's _tradition_ \--" 

"--and if you think I'm going to sit through another one of these things after what happened _last_ year--" 

"It wasn't so bad," Corran interjected, siding with Luke for once. "Kyp's robes were a little scorched, but nothing actually caught on fire. And it was _hilarious_ to watch--" 

"--I didn't sign up for this, Skywalker--" 

"Well, you don't have to participate if you don't want to," Luke said. "But this is important to Tionne, and I think we should support her in this. And it's only fair to give the others an opportunity to show off their talents." 

"Besides, they _love_ it," Corran added unhelpfully. 

Mara glowered at them both. "Don't expect me to perform, Skywalker," she said at last, and stalked off to her office. She didn't quite slam the door behind her, but it was very close. 

"What's eating _her_?" Corran asked when he was sure she was out of earshot. 

"Coming from Mara, that was a ringing endorsement," Luke said, trying to keep his tone light. He agreed with Corran's assessment, but he couldn't quite put his finger on the problem and it bothered him. 

Ever since they'd returned to Yavin, Mara had made it abundantly clear she wasn't interested in talking to him about whatever it was. He'd rather pry a nerf steak away from a hungry vornskr than to trespass where he wasn't wanted. Still... 

****

True to Corran's predictions, everyone except Mara was excited when Luke announced the next day that Talent Night was a go. The weeks leading up to the performance were noteworthy for the furtive whispers and glances as the students planned their acts in secret, and faint strains of music could be heard coming from their quarters at odd hours. 

The students' distraction--not to mention some of the teachers--was evident in their lessons. Luke was sure this was one reason why Mara detested Talent Night so much. Still, he found himself looking forward to it as the appointed day drew closer. 

"Are you going to perform?" Callista asked him one evening as they readied for bed. 

"Me? No." Luke shook his head. "I'm not against it, but I don't feel like I have any particular talents." 

"I strongly disagree with that," Callista said, making a seductive gesture with her fingers. 

"I mean, sharing on stage," he corrected, though he couldn't help but smile at the compliment. "How about you?" 

"Oh, I'm thinking about it..." she said. "'Got to show those young whippersnapers who's boss, after all,'" she said, adopting the whiny growl of a popular Tondorian comic artist from the Clone War era whose holos they had been watching together. 

He laughed. "Well, I'm sure you'll give them all a run for their money." 

But she refused to share any details, insisting that it would ruin the surprise. 

So it was with no small amount of curiosity that he arrived at the meditation hall on the appointed evening to discover the cushions lining the walls had been re-arranged in loose semi-circles to create a kind of stage at the center of the room. Three folding screens had been set on either side of the room to create a makeshift backstage. Dorsk 81, who had improbably volunteered as MC, was fiddling with a set of voice amplification devices from a stool tucked away to one side of the stage. 

Kirana Ti hit the han as if it were time for meditation as the community filed in and took their seats, laughing and joking amongst each other as they settled down. Luke couldn't help but smile at their easy camaraderie, and glanced pointedly at Mara when she took her place on his left side. She ignored him, blank on the surface and tightly wound underneath, any other emotions obscured by that massive wall she'd constructed in her mind. She was the only one besides Luke wearing formal robes, and he couldn't help but wonder if she was making a statement. 

Instead, he turned to Callista, sitting on his other side. She wore a light blue dress and leggings worthy of any lounge singer on this side of the mid-Rim. "Don't you have to get ready?" 

"I'm performing towards the end," she said. "Tionne wanted to be last." 

Mara pursed her lips at this exchange, but said nothing. 

On stage, Dorsk 81 cleared his throat, which vibrated through the room with the amplification. "All right, gentlebeings," he said in his calm, accented Basic. "It's Talent Night, and you all know what that means - a chance for everyone to show off all the skills we've acquired that have nothing to do with lifting rocks or staring at walls for hours on end." 

There was a ripple of affectionate laughter from the audience at this. 

"Be kind, cheer on your fellow students and teachers, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show." He paused and added, as if an afterthought. "And nobody set anything on fire this time, okay? Once was enough. That said, there are fire extinguishers at the ready backstage and please make sure you know where all the exits are, keeping in mind that the best one is usually behind you." 

More laughter from the crowd. 

"Good. May the Force be with us all. All right, opening up the evening is our very own favorite ex-hermit and Tibanna gas prospector, Streen! Let's hear it for Streen!" 

Streen had befriended a number of pikka birds, whom he had trained to do simple tricks with a combination of his Force talents and very generous bribes of fruit and nutmeats. He beamed at the applause at the end of his routine, and his birds swooped away out of the meditation hall at his whistle, earning him one last round of cheers before he departed the stage. 

Up next was Cilghal, who recited an excerpt from the Mon Calamari epic poem, _The Myriad Wonders of the Great Mother Ocean_. Cilghal was an excellent orator, but Luke found the journey of the Small One as she made her way to consult the Oracle of the Hidden Reef less than engaging, and his attention wandered during the lengthy Catalogue of Fishes. 

No doubt it made more sense in the original language, he decided. 

Kirana Ti and Traitakh's offering was not so sedate. The two accomplished warriors presented a paired skills demonstration with live weapons that had everyone spellbound. Even though it had clearly been choreographed to show off their best moves--Luke was certain Traitakh would _never_ indulge in a spinning kick in a serious fight--it was impressive. He made a mental note to ask Traitakh about it next time he was in the dojo. 

After that, Kam, Aerial and Wedan presented a series of abstract shadow puppetry, while G'ata tootled away on a kloo horn. Luke wasn't sure how this combination had come together, but he was pleased to see Kam working so well with the newer students. He sent a pointed glance at Mara, as if to say, _See what good things can come from Talent Night?_ , which of course she ignored. 

Dorsk 81 had prepared a comedy routine, although Luke suspected a sense of humor did not come naturally to him. Hailing from Khomm, an orderly, predictable world where asexual cloning was the normal mode of reproduction and individuality was not encouraged, Dorsk 81's comic timing was skewed differently from the galactic standards in odd and unexpected ways. Judging from the sheer number of Corellian jokes--most of which Luke had heard from Han back in the old days--he suspected Corran had been heavily involved in preparing his apprentice for the stage. 

"That's my cue," Callista said, as Dorsk 81 finished his routine to polite, but not enthusiastic applause. She got to her feet and threaded her way through the audience as Kyp Durron sauntered onto the stage. He was dressed entirely in black, sporting a ridiculous top hat and velvet-lined cape that Lando had encouraged him to purchase during his recuperation on Coruscant in the aftermath of the Exar Kun debacle. 

This year, Kyp had prepared another magic act, but he'd toned down his performance considerably after last year's unanticipated pyrotechnics, offering card tricks and sleight-of-hand that he'd picked up from Lando. After showing there was nothing up his sleeve, he pulled a ysalamir out of his hat, to the delight of his fellow students. 

"Amateur!" Mara coughed under her breath, unimpressed. "If you watch his hands instead of his big mouth, you can see him palm that damn lizard right at the beginning. If he's going to spend all his time practicing, he ought to get it _right_ \--"

Kyp's fascination with prestidigitation had started while under house arrest on Coruscant for several weeks with a ysalamiri nutrient frame tied to his back to keep him from using his considerable Force powers to cause trouble. After endless rounds of sabacc with Han and Lando had grown stale, the two ex-smugglers had started teaching him simple card tricks, and he'd been fascinated by sleight of hand ever since. By the time Mara had arrived to take over his training, she'd found him contrite, repetant, and prone to pulling flowers out behind her ears at the slightest opportunity. She harassed him endlessly for it--but more for his poor form than out of distate for the medium, Luke noted. 

Happily, Kyp had calmed down considerably under her caustic tutelage, and had stayed firmly on the straight and narrow path after his near-disastrous brush with the Dark Side and the wild rampage that had nearly taken out the uneti trees. If a fascination with three card monte would keep him from flirting with the Dark Side again, Luke was all for it. 

Then it was Callista's turn. She sauntered on stage, a vocal amplifier in hand, and as the music kicked up, Luke couldn't help but break into a grin. Her performance--a rendition of Peckie Blue and the Starboys' greatest hit, "Cosmic Lover, one of their mutuals favorites--soon had everyone rocking and swaying in their seats except for Mara, who sat rigidly upright. 

"Oooooo," Callista crooned on the chorus. 

" _And nobody loves you  
Like I love you,   
Cosmic lover,   
We belong together  
Ain't no distance too vast to hide me  
When you look at me like you want me  
Cosmic lover  
I'll love you forever now that you are mine..._" 

Luke didn't need to turn his head to _feel_ Mara stiffen beside him as if she'd been hit in the face, though nothing in her posture changed. He sneaked a glance in her direction, but her expression was still neutral--but the intensity in her mental projections had thickened and strengthened to absorb the brunt of her reaction. It was as if the song had some special meaning for her that he didn't understand--

And then Mara's tension vanished. Luke blinked and realized the song was over. With applause and whistles and cheers, Callista bowed, and made her way offstage. 

"Thanks, Callista for that great performance!" Dorsk 81 said, as he strolled back onto stage. "And up next--last but certainly not least--we have our very own instructor Tionne Solustar--" 

"No," Mara interjected, her voice carrying through the hall without the need for amplification as she rose to her feet. " _I_ am next." 

Dorsk 81 was so surprised he put up no resistance--not that anyone could resist Mara when she was glaring at them. "Uh--whatever you say," he said, and edged back offstage to safety. 

Furtive whispers ran through the audience as Mara stalked to the stage. No one had any idea what was about to happen. 

What was she doing? Luke wondered. She clearly had planned this well in advance, and yet--and yet--

Onstage, Mara turned and faced the audience. She gestured to something Luke couldn't see offstage, and recorded music began to play -- a long, slow, sultry Aviden tango. 

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Mara pulled back the hood of her cloak, revealing that she'd braided her red-gold hair off her neck in a series of interwoven loops that rivaled an Alderaani wedding crown for sheer complexity. Then as the music built, her robes slipped to the ground, and Luke inhaled sharply along with the rest of the audience at what was revealed underneath. 

Mara wore a red shimmersilk strapless gown that perfectly matched the color of her hair, one that left most of her back exposed. Gold flickered through the dress as she moved, as did the circlet of pearls and gold around her neck and and the emerald bracelets that ran up her otherwise bare arms to the elbows. 

Slowly, langourously, in time to the music, she extended her arm to one side, curved it, and leaned into the position, holding herself perfectly still, her expression still resolutely neutral.

And then the music picked up, and she burst into action. 

Luke had forgotten that Mara's cover at the Imperial court had been as a dancer, that she'd even gone to Jabba's palace and danced for the crime lord while she plotted to kill Luke when he came to rescue Han. She rarely talked about that part of her life. He'd certainly never seen her dance before. 

He discovered he'd been missing out. 

The music swayed, and she rocked along with it, leaping and gliding to the right and the left, backwards and forwards with the rocking beat. He didn't know much about Aviden culture, didn't know what the song was supposed to represent, but in Mara's hands, it became a weaving of life and death and the interplay between them, as she rose like a mythical phoenix from the sky into the depths and back again. 

He forgot who he was, so absorbed in the melding of music and Mara as she wove a story with her motions that there was no room for any other thoughts. Her timing was as precise and complex as in a battle, but there were no weapons, no violence, no blood, and no death. The Force was with her, and she gave herself up to it utterly. 

And then, as quickly as it had began, the music slowed. Slowly, langourously, she slid into one last pose, held it as the music built to a climax - and then, silence. 

Only when Mara had broken the position and made one deep bow was the spell was broken by applause and Luke was released from his trance. 

" _Well_ ," Callista said in his ear. Had she been beside him the whole time? He'd been so engrossed he hadn't noticed her arrival. "Well, that was _something_." 

Luke closed his mouth, managed to come to his senses long enough to mumble something vaguely coherent. She gave him an odd look, but let it pass, settling back down beside him on her cushion as Mara stepped behind the screens and vanished. 

Dorsk 81 got to his feet and cleared his throat. "Uh, wow, that was amazing!" he said awkwardly, adjusting his bow tie as he fumbled to regain his poise. "Give it up again for Jedi Instructor Jade again!" 

More whistles and cheers from the audience. Everyone, like Luke, was impressed, even if they weren't quite sure whether or not it was appropriate to show it. 

Dorsk 81's confidence returned now that he was back on firmer ground. "And now, last but certainly not least, our very own Tionne Solustar with the latest addition to her real-time historical song cycle, 'The Ballad of Cray and Nichos'!" 

Kam emerged from behind the screen with a carved wooden chair, which he placed in the center of the stage, before exiting back the way he had come. Tionne came out a few moments later, her ballichord slung over her shoulder. She settled in the chair, plucked a few strings on her ballichord to ensure it was in tune, and glanced up at the audience when she was ready. 

Callista squeezed his hand. "Here we go," she said quietly. "Ready to be a hero?" 

"Ready or not, here we come," he said, and then Tionne began. 

Tionne was as good a songwriter as she was a musician. She stuck mostly to the facts, though privately Luke was grateful she had steered away from Cray's intense disappointment in her droid-lover's inability to help her escape from her prison aboard the _Eye of Palpatine_. 

In the ballad, Luke, Callista, and Mara were supporting characters; the real stars were Cray and Nichos. Tionne sang of the tragedy of their love, of Nichos's illness, their decision to go out together in a blaze of glory to destroy the _Eye of Palpatine_ and save the galaxy, even as Cray gave up her body to host the benevolent Jedi spirit trapped in the computer core. The ballad ended with Mara rescuing Luke and a resurrected Callista, even as they mourned Cray and Nichos's sacrifice, and swore to keep their memory alive in the New Jedi Order. A

Despite his best efforts, Luke found himself tearing up. Callista, who had lived through it all, wept openly. So did most of the students. They, too, would become of the history; they, too, would have songs written of their deeds if they were worthy and heart-felt. _We will be legends to those who come after us,_ he thought, _and hopefully they will learn from our mistakes. What better legacy for Cray and Nichos could we have offered them?_

As Tionne strummed the finale chords, the students roared, and treated the beaming Tionne to a standing ovation. Admist the whistles and cheers, Kam returned to the stage, this time bearing a bouquet of ivory paradise-lilies, and gave his wife a passionate kiss--which made the students cheer even harder. 

It was only after the tumult of applause and congratulations slowed and the audience began to disperse, that Luke realized Mara had never come back to the hall after her performance. 

Then Callista said, "Luke? Are you all right?" and took his hand, and that particular thought slipped away and did not return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The _han_ is a real instrument in Zen Buddhist monasteries, which looks [more or less](http://inthefootstepsofthebuddha.com/the-han-at-tassajara-zen-mountain-center/) as I've described it here. 
> 
> _'The most brilliant AI programmer at the Magrody Institute—and strong in the Force as well_ ' is a callback from _Children of the Jedi_ by Barbara Hambly. 
> 
> "[You're] perfect just the way you are, and you could use a little improvement," is a teaching from Zen master Shunryu Suzuki.


	5. Chapter 5

Luke leaned against the thick clay outer walls of Ben Kenobi's hut and pulled his knees up against his chest as he strove to remain in the rapidly dwindling patch of shade. It was only a few hours after first dawn, but the heat was already fierce. Mirages of imaginary water flickered out of the corner of his visions - an especially cruel illusion for foolhardy travelers caught wandering without appropriate precautions. 

Stay-in-the-shadows was a game he'd played constantly as a child, whether by himself or in the company of a reprogrammed maintenance droid on the edges of the Lars family compound. Later, as a teenager, he'd indulged in a slightly more refined version, loitering outside the general store at Tosche Station with Camie and Biggs and whoever else was around.

He dug a finger idly through the sand, tracing out simple patterns, only to erase them upon completion and start over again and again. There was nothing else to do except sit and watch the desert and wait for Tor to finish the errand that had brought them here. And brood, of course. 

He'd spent a restless night in Brother Amaeo's carved enclave in Beggar's Canyon, tossing and turning for hours after an unsettling, restless night. He'd dreamed he stood paralyzed while Cray/Callista was dragged away by Tuskens loose on the _Eye of Palpatine_ while Mara hovered over his shoulder in silent disapproval. An hour of silent meditation and prayers before first dawn calmed his nerves enough to enjoy a simple breakfast on the balcony overlooking the canyon where they'd dined the night before, but he was still tired. 

After their meal, he and Tor had taken leave of their hosts and descended to the canyon floor where they'd left the _Destiny_ the previous evening. Much to her disappointment, there was no sign of canyon krayts about. 

"Trust me, you don't want to mess with one," Luke assured her. 

"But a _dragon_ \--" she protested, and he waved her off. 

True to Luke's predictions, the flight to Ben Kenobi's hut was uneventful to the point of boredom. Whoever had chased them yesterday had given up, and no other ships appeared on the sensors to mark their presence, let alone challenge them. Still, he gave Anchorhead a wide berth, emerging out of the Canyon onto the Benzin Plateau, bypassing the flat, featureless expanse of the Great Chott in favor of the shifting ridges and valleys of the Dune Sea.

Even so, it was hard not to get lost in the stories, the memories that rushed back at him as he navigated. He did his best to remain focused on the controls and the coordinates, but it was hard going. Tor, sensing his frayed nerves, did not interrupt him with conversation. 

As he'd expected, Ben Kenobi's hut was unchanged since his previous visit, just before the Battle of Endor. In the desert, with no rain, such dwellings could last for centuries. A white rounded adobe dome perched on the cliffs that marked the beginning of the Jundland Wastes, overlooking the vast expanse of the Dune Sea, with no sign that its former occupant had been dead for over a decade. Inside, it was still the same mess of sand drifts and rubble, picked apart by scavengers and the vagaries of the wind. 

The last time he'd been here eight years ago, he'd nearly collapsed in a feverish sea of memories and visions. He'd made it out to his speeder, somehow ending up in the remains of the Lars homestead in time to watch the doubled dawn from the ridge above the family compound. As he entered Ben's hut, he braced himself for a similar flood of emotions--only to be surprised when they didn't come.

There was nothing here for him now. He'd laid all his ghosts--including Ben--to rest, and they'd gone wherever ghosts went when they weren’t pestering the living. Ben might have given Luke his father's lightsaber in this house, but he hadn't left anything else tangible for his last apprentice to inherit. 

Tor fell to digging through the sand drifts with gusto, but Luke had only been able to bear twenty minutes in her company before retreating outside. He didn't know why Tor had seized on this mad assumption that Ben had hid uneti seeds on Tatooine, but maybe once she was satisfied that there was nothing here--

He wasn't sure what would happen then. He had no particular desire to return to Yavin and continue the practice period, but there was nowhere else that called to him. Callista was out in the galaxy somewhere, and Mara was on Rodia, and neither of them wanted to see him, given how badly he'd screwed up with both of them. 

Here he was, the great Luke Skywalker, war hero, Jedi master, famous and respected throughout the galaxy for his mighty powers and courageous deeds--and he'd trade it all in a heartbeat to have them return. One of them. Both of them. Anything he could get. 

He could go to Coruscant, he decided at length. It would be good to see Leia and Han and the children again, and they would be happy to see him; no questions asked, at least not openly. Leia would understand without him having to explain much, and Han too, though in different ways. He would be safe there, sheltered, if he chose. He could go down to the mid-levels and get some decent pilo-noodles, too, maybe compete in a few illegal swoop-races under an alias. If Tor continued to let him pilot her ship, he didn't see how she could object to him deciding the course for once. There were plenty of plants on Coruscant for her to poke at, too. 

She'd been right about flying, though. He'd missed it. Staying ground-bound during the Yavin rainy season was chafing at him. All those years of training and hardship, and he was still that eager hotshot, always looking for the horizon, always reaching for what was just beyond his grasp. But Tor hadn't thought it was a _bad_ thing, the way Yoda had. 

What had she said to him last night? _"You just have to find a way to make it work, that's all."_ What did that even mean? What would that even look like? 

Even in the shadows, it was still hot. The heat didn't bother him, not anymore. It was hot; that was how things were here. You accepted it or cursed it, but it was easier if you accepted it as a given and moved on with your life as best you could. He hadn't known climate could be different until he'd set foot on Yavin for the first time with Han and Leia, flush from their escape from the first Death Star. And what a whirlwind his life had been since...

Since then, he'd had a lot of practice with discomfort, enough so that a little heat was no big deal. And here he was again, back where it had all began, more or less. So much had changed since then, and yet--

Something flickered on the edge of his vision, a break in the monotony. He turned, yanked the macrobinoculars out of the sack next to him and fiddled with the focus to zoom in on the spot in question. 

Tuskens. Absolutely _no_ mistaking them. Confused, puzzled, but no sign of agitation or attack-- 

And then they were gone. 

Luke stared, his mind racing through the possibilities. He wasn't worried, exactly - but his last encounters with the Tuskens kidnapped by the _Eye of Palpatine_ were unpleasant, and the one before that - chasing Artoo down through the canyons with Threepio in tow - wasn't much better. He wasn't looking forward to a fight if they should attack him. But now that he was aware of their presence, he and Tor could avoid them if he stayed alert and watchful. 

Footsteps crunched on the gravel beside him. He jerked the macrobinoculars down more quickly than he'd meant to, even though he knew it wasn't a Tusken who approached him now.

"You all right?" Tor asked, slumping down beside him in what little shade remained. 

"Sand People," he said, pointing to where he'd spotted them a moment earlier. "On the far side of the canyon over there, watching us. They're gone now." 

"Should I be concerned?" 

"I'm not," Luke said, and meant it. "They were checking us out, but it didn't seem like they meant any harm. I have a feeling that they believe this place is haunted, even though it's been twenty years since Ben lived here."

"That'll do it," Tor agreed. "How does it feel to be back after all this time?" 

"It reminds me of the old Correllian shanty, 'Widening Circles'," Luke said. "You know it?" 

"'I live my life in widening circles,'" Tor sang. "'Ones that reach out across the stars. I may not complete this last, but I surrender to it.... '" 

Luke joined in on the chorus: "'Millennia come and go, and I still don't know - am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?'"

Han was especially fond of that song, and he and Luke had sung it often during the dark, cold, awful days with the Rebellion, when comforts were few and far between. It was, Han explained one evening when they were fixing up the _Falcon_ , the inspiration for his ship's name--only he'd had to explain what a falcon was in order for Luke to catch the reference. Such swift-diving avians had no counterparts in the arid skies of Tatooine. 

"That strange, huh?" Tor said, when they had finished. 

"Are you surprised?" 

"Not especially. You have this look about you when you're brooding," she said. 

He had to smile at that. She never failed to call him out on it. "Maybe you can write a paper on Jedi social behaviors instead of uneti trees. Or anti-social behaviors, if you prefer. Speaking of which, did you find what you were looking for in there?" 

She shook her head. "No. No sign of any seeds or any surviving material that would suggest Kenobi ever brought them here." 

Luke resisted the strong temptation to say _I told you so_. "What about underground?" he offered. There were additional living quarters under the surface, full of growth tanks and 'vaporator parts and all the necessities for eking out a relatively self-sufficient existence on Tatooine. 

"Nothing except a nest of hive-spiders and a pseudoscorpion, none of which appreciated my intrusion on their living quarters." 

"So, what now?" he asked, as diplomatically as possible. "I was thinking maybe we could go to Cor--" 

Tor cut him off before he could finish the thought. "We go on to where the trees are," she said, as if it were obvious. 

He stared at her. "Just like that?" 

"I didn't think there would be any seeds here," Tor said patiently, as if explaining the obvious. "I was sure he planted them. But this place was on the way, and I thought it reasonable to check to make sure, just in case." 

"What makes you think he planted them?" Luke asked, his heart sinking. 

The whole thing had the makings of a conspiracy theory, and he didn't understand it. He knew she loved the uneti trees, was determined to bring them back from their near-extinction--that was why he'd enlisted her help at the Academy, after all. But he he wasn't sure why she had fixated so much on the idea of Obi-wan Kenobi establishing a secret population of them after the fall of the Old Republic. On _Tatooine_ , of all places. 

She was quiet for a while. "Call it a hunch," she said at last. "I know what it's like to be in exile, without any hope of return. I know what it's like to be entrusted with something important. He brought the seeds here, and he couldn't keep them in storage for twenty years if he wanted them to stay viable; he had to grow them out somewhere. That much I know for certain. The only question is if I'm right about _where_ he planted them." 

"You think so?" Luke was skeptical. But they'd come this far. Might as well go and see, just to get her off his back. And it wasn't like he had anything else more pressing on his schedule. 

"Shall we go and find out?" She rose to her feet, reached out a hand to him. 

' _I live my life in widening circles, ones that reach out across the stars....'_

He accepted her hand, let her help him up. "Yes."

***

"Now what do we do?" Luke asked, as they made their way back to rock cliffs where he'd sheltered the _Destiny_. 

"We walk," Tor said, gesturing with her remote for the ship's gangplank to come down. "I'll be in the cargo hold if you need me, getting our supplies together." 

"Wait a minute--we're _walking_?" 

"Unless you have a better option," she said, and sauntered up into the ship ahead of him. 

He stared after for her for a moment in incredulous silence, before he shook his head and followed her aboard. He ought to have known something like this was coming. There was no way a ship the size of the _Destiny_ could fit in the tight, rimrock canyons of the Jundland, and they had no other means of transport.

"We should have stopped in town for a speeder," he said when he caught up with her in the cargo hold, kneeling over two military-grade backpacks in a neutral khakhi color that would have served for the armed forces--official and otherwise--on a hundred major worlds. As a starfighter pilot in the Alliance, he'd never spent much time with the gear of the ground troops, but he was familiar with the general principles. 

Tor shrugged and went back to fumbling with the fastenings. "Too narrow for a speeder in there. Besides, it would attract unwanted attention." 

"From--?"

"Help me with this strap, would you?" 

He abandoned the argument and held the proferred strap while she tightened it to her satisfaction. It was a foolish question, anyway. Most of the wildlife on Tatooine was a nuisance at best and lethal at worse, and all of it would be disturbed by the noise and hum of a speeder in their domain. And then there were the Sand People to consider--

His old XP-37 speeder certainly hadn't been protected when he'd driven it into the Jundland after Artoo. If they were trying to avoid attracting the Sand Peoples' attention, it would be better to go quietly on foot, as Ben Kenobi had done all those years ago. 

He took another look at the backpacks. Up close, they were smuggler knockoffs of an old Imperial style, but of surprisingly good quality. The upper section of the packs had been modified to include a bulky mechanical device wired into the top of the frame, with a clear tube with an attached mouthpiece meant to curve around the wearer's head. He had to squint at the contraption for a moment before he recognized it. 

"A portable vaporator?" 

"Of course. How else do you drink in the desert?" 

"How do the trees manage it?" 

She rolled her eyes, refusing to take the bait. "It's at least a day's walk from here to where the trees are. If you don't want any water between now and then--or you've grown roots--let me know, and I'll take yours off." 

"No, no, it's fine," Luke said quickly. "I've never seen anyone bother with anything this small, that's all, even for personal use. It's awkward to carry--and water is _heavy_." 

"It's not a particularly efficient arrangement, but it'll keep us alive and reasonably well-hydrated until we get there," Tor conceded. "Unless you think it'll slow you down too much--" 

"No, it's fine," he said firmly, hoisting his pack up and slinging the straps over his shoulder to test the balance. "Not much room to maneuver with the vaporator attached, but I'll manage. What else is in here?" 

"Odds and ends," Tor said, as she wrapped her face and neck with a tan scarf. Luke caught a glimpse of her green rakusu tucked under her coveralls before she pulled a cloak over herself for an additional layer of protection. "Ration bars, emergency medkits, a portable shelter... anything I thought might be useful. There are goggles and extra protective gear in the side pouches we need them. I'm also bringing my field kit, so we can take cuttings when we get there." 

Luke smiled. She was so confident there would be trees, and he didn't have the heart to argue with her. Once they'd gotten to this mysterious place, she'd see for herself that it was a dead end, and then they'd-- 

Well. He wouldn't worry about what would happen after that. For now, it was enough to be far away from the academy and all the accompanying problems of his personal life. He could deal with everything else later. 

The pack had a hip-belt to help balance the weight and he snapped the buckles of it into place, making sure that his lightsaber was easily accessible underneath the folds of his brown Jedi robes. It was probably overkill to have so much gear, and he wasn't sure they really _needed_ it, but it was better to be prepared for the worst, just in case. 

_Ready or not, here we come_. 

*** 

Before they left, Tor insisted on putting a camo-cover over the <>Destiny to protect it from sandstorms and especially ambitious scavengers. Luke had used camo-cover from time to time for his X-wing, but securing cover on a ship the size of the _Destiny_ was a pain even with two people and it took an hour before she was satisified with the results. All the work seemed excessive for two days out in the canyons--but it was Tor's ship, not his, and he respected her protectiveness of it. 

Still, as he glanced back over his shoulder, he had to admit the results were impressive. With the ship powered down and hidden behind the camo-cover,it was impossible to see its outline unless you knew it was there. Any Tuskens, if they were still out there and looking for something to scavenge, would be gravely disappointed. 

"Tell me about the watchers you saw at Kenobi's place," Tor said as they set off across the dunes towards the imposing rock canyons that marked the beginning of the Jundland Wastes. She had brought her staff of tulki wood along, and was using it to make her way through the shifting sands. 

The heat of the two suns beat down on them, so thick and intense he could almost see it, rising off the sand and rippling in the piercing light. The sooner they made it to the shelter of the canyon, the better. 

"Oh, the Sand People? I don't know that much about them," Luke said. "Nobody does." 

"Really? _Nobody_?" 

"The Outer Rim doesn't attract many anthropologists and the Sand People aren't friendly," he said. "A hundred years ago, a group of mostly human settlers founded Fort Tusken on the northern edge of the Jundland, fifty klicks or so from here. It was raided and destroyed by a horde of Sand People after three years of pitched battles, and everyone inside the fort was killed. That's why the Sand People are also known as 'Tusken Raiders' in these parts." 

"Is that typical behavior for them?" Tor asked. 

"Yes and no. Yes, because they _do_ attack occasionally, but nobody really knows what triggers it. They can pass by a settlement for years without problems, only to strike without any warning and kill everyone and everything they can. They don't seem interested in conversation or peaceful exchanges on those rare occasions when someone tries to negotiate before the shooting starts." 

"Maybe they have other priorities," she suggested. 

"I guess," Luke said. "You see a lot of bands in the Dune Sea, and when I was a kid, they would occasionally come out as far as the Great Chott. But the Jundland Wastes have always been their territory for as long as there have been human settlers on Tatooine. As far as I know, the Fort Tusken massacre was the last time anybody tried to stake a claim out here, except for Ben Kenobi. We always thought he was crazy, living that far out from town, alone and unprotected." 

"Not so unprotected, as it turns out." 

"Well, I didn't know that at the time.... but I'm sure he must have had some dealings with them. He ran a whole pack off me when I came out here after Artoo ran away from my uncle's farm. I still don't know how he did that. I got knocked unconscious in their first attack, and when I came to, he was leaning over me, asking me if I was all right." 

"Huh," Tor said. 

"He knew a lot about their ways. He knew right away when we found the wreckage of the Jawa sandcrawler that had sold us Artoo and Threepio that it wasn't the Sand People who had attacked them. The Empire tried to cover it up, but they had the banthas in a group and Ben knew that Sand People always ride single file." 

"Being on good terms with your neighbors is a sound strategy, particularly if they keep prying eyes away," she said. "It wouldn't surprise me if Kenobi made an arrangement with them. What do these Sand People look like?" 

"They're humanoid, but they always wear masks, brown bandages with metal holes for their eyes and mouth. If anyone's ever seen what they look like under the masks, they've never survived long enough to share it. Like the Jawas, the Sand People were here when the first Republic settlers arrived a few generations ago, but they never took well to the presence of off-worlders the way the Jawas did. They like the tech well enough, though. They use blasters and slugthrowers if they can get them, but their favorite weapon is a gaderiffi-- sort of like your staff," he said, gesturing to the one she held in her hands. 

"And you thought the ones you saw at Kenobi's place wouldn't harm us?" 

"Those ones didn't," Luke said. "At least not at that moment. But I don't know what would happen if our paths cross again. I'm usually good at sensing danger before it happens, but--" 

"I know. No substitute for caution." 

Tor looked up towards the canyons that loomed up over them as they approached, as if scanning for dangers on the ridgeline above them. But there was nothing there that Luke could detect with any of his senses. Everything was quiet and still in the buzzy heat of the approaching noon. Everything with sense was curled up in the shade, waiting for cooler hours to go about their business. He hoped that was true for any nearby Tuskens as well. 

***

The glare of the suns eased as they entered the shelter of the canyons, but the heat was intense, even in the shade. The vaporator in his pack slid against the tops of his shoulders and the back of his neck, forcing him to stop several times and make adjustments before it no longer shifted when he moved. When he was thirsty, he sucked at the tube by his mouth and sweet water slaked his thirst. Every time he drank, the vaporator hummed quietly and began the slow work of re-filling the storage tank again. 

Tor led the way pausing every now and then to consult the glowing navigational sphere in her hand before pressing on again. Luke envied her certainty and sureness of purpose in the maze of meandering passages that stretched out in every direction before them. Ever since Mara and Callista had left, he'd done nothing but drift in the current, unable to summon the energy to do anything else except what was directly in front of him. At least out here with Tor, he had a direction and a destination, even if the whole thing was nothing more than a wild bantha chase. 

He had to admit it was a beautiful one, though. As they walked, the colors of the rock around them changed from an endless dull brown to a pale red-rose punctuated at intervals by other shades and textures marking millennia of geological upheaval and change. Tor traced the rise and fall of rivers and oceans in lines in the walls around them, as they moved through ancient riverbeds and endless sand dunes transmuted into stone through the intense pressure of grinding continents. Now and then, there were fossils in the rocks, tiny spiraling snails and shells forced back into the light after millions of years underground, weathered by rushing waters long since evaporated by the baking heat of twin suns. 

"I had such a crush on Obi-wan Kenobi when I was younger," Tor said in the midst of one of these geological sililoquies. 

"What?" Luke said, jolted by the non sequitur. 

"I must have been fifteen or so. This was right before the Clone Wars. He was _famous_ then - a general in the Republic, a war hero, and very, very handsome. There was a whole group of us in school who adored him, much to the chagrin of the proper matrons running the place who didn't approve of foreigners. We watched every holo and newsreel of him we could get our hands on." 

"You had a crush on _Ben_?" he repeated, still dazed by her revelation. On his last trip to Tatooine, he'd seen a vision of the younger Kenobi with his pupil Anakin Skywalker--but it was hard to reconcile that image and those he'd pieced together out of the surviving records with the aged hermit Luke had known. 

"He was too old for me," Tor said, as if that explained everything. "But I especially liked that he wasn't Sawarran - it made him seem so exotic and forbidden to someone who'd never even been off-planet before, especially in a place as insular as our system. Then I went away to university, and the political situation in the Republic deteriorated and I got distracted with protesting the widespread corruption of the Galactic Senate. Then Palpatine declared himself Emperor, the pro-Imperial faction on Sawarra staged a coup and declared all of us enemies of the state and I went into hiding at Akkan-ji. And now here I am, walking in Obi-wan's footsteps with his final student. It's funny how life works, that's all." 

Luke nodded. He'd had similar thoughts over the course of his strange and varied career. 

"Do you know why he came here in the first place?" Tor asked after a while. 

"Me, I think," Luke said. "He dropped me off with my aunt and uncle when I was a baby--to keep me hidden from Vader--and stuck around to watch over me. He was waiting for when I was old enough to train as a Jedi, but Uncle Owen never let him talk to me. Got real mad whenever his name even came up and I never knew why until the day I left Tatooine for good. Once my friend Windy and I went out on his pet dewback and got stuck in a sandstorm and Ben rescued us and made sure we got home safe. I thought Uncle Owen was going to have a heart attack when he saw me with him. Nearly ran him off our place with his slugthrower." 

"Why did Owen hate him so much?" 

Luke had wondered this himself, off and on over the years. "I think he blamed him for what happened to Anakin," he said carefully. "I don't know if he knew about Vader or the Force--but I think he believed that Ben was responsible for my father's death. From 'a certain point of view', that's exactly what happened." 

"Was he really Anakin's brother?" Tor mused. "Or was that another way in which Kenobi stretched the truth?" 

"I always thought they were related, but I don't know for sure. It--wasn't something he and Aunt Beru ever wanted to talk about, and I gave up asking after a while because I knew they didn't like it. But they did tell me that my mother was an off-worlder, who had died giving birth to me, and Anakin had grown up here before he left to become a pilot." 

"Have you thought about a gene test, then?"

"I mean, yes--but it doesn't really matter now, does it? They _were_ my family, when it counted--they raised me and took care of me and treated me as if I were their own son. And even if I was interested, there isn't much material left to test. The Empire took care of that when they burned the farm to the ground." 

"Do you have any other relatives?" 

"Not that I know of. Aunt Beru had some cousins over near Bestine, but I never knew them very well--she always went alone to visit them." 

But what if that was a lie, too? There was so much he'd taken for granted that had been swept away from him over the years, revelation after revelation after revelation. There was so much he didn't know, and Tor's questions were bringing all of that ignorance into sharp relief. 

Leia always said it didn't matter who his blood relatives were, it was the family he _chose_ that mattered--but Leia had grown up on Alderaan, with its complicated family ties and vast network of social connections, with a complex language that required the speakers to establish exactly how they were related before any conversation could proceed. 

Once, perhaps, he would have been jealous of Leia's upbringing, so different from the lonely isolation of his own childhood in the desert. But now--after they'd both lost so much--it didn't seem important. They'd built a new family together with the people they cared about. 

The thought of Leia sent a pang through him. They hadn't talked since that last conversation before the practice period, and it had been far, far, too long. He should call her when he got back to the _Destiny_ and let her know what he was up to--

Despite the fact that she'd named her youngest son after him, Leia was aggressively uninterested in exploring Anakin Skywalker's genealogy. He couldn't imagine her enthusiasm if he pursued this path, even though it was probably better to know the truth than to remain ignorant--

"I'll think about a gene test," he said into the silence. "Maybe Ghent or someone can dredge up some records somewhere and we can see. I don't expect to find anything, but--I never expected Vader to be my father or Leia to be my sister. Like you said, it's funny how life works out." 

They continued on through the canyons in silence. 

***

The light changed as they pressed on through the canyons. As the suns moved in their arc, the strip of cloudless blue sky above widened and narrowed as the walls expanded or contracted around them. Sometimes they walked through wide avenues big enough to run a herd of banthas in parallel; sometimes the path was so narrow they were forced to walk in single file, tossing their packs ahead of them on the tighter curves. 

Luke drank water from his portable vaporator when he was thirsty. When they paused to rest a few hours into the journey, he mechanically ate a ration bar, chewing thoughtfully in the silence. The packaging claimed it was made with real nerf, but he couldn't taste anything over the thick spice paste used for flavoring. 

Mara, he recalled with a pang, adored ration bars. It had been a struggle in the early days of the academy to convince her to take her meals with the rest of the community. He had been so proud when she'd finally come around to "real food", as he called it, taken it as proof that she had accepted her new life and her role shepherding the new Jedi order with him. 

It had never occurred to him at the time that she might simply walk away from it all. 

Moving was easier than resting. He lost himself in the simple motion of putting one foot in front of the other, following Tor's lead instead of striking out on his own. The world narrowed to breath and stone, dust and body, with no beginning and no end to the journey. There was no room for past and future, no room for any pesky thoughts that circled his mind when he paused to rest. After a month of stillness on Yavin during the practice period, it was a relief to move. 

During his sojourn on Sawarra, he'd seen the pilgrims making their rounds through the city streets and country lanes, circumambulating the temples and chanting their mantras of penance and renewal. _All my ancient, twisted karma,_ , they sang in their native tongue, _from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now firmly avow_ , over and over again in endless loops as they walked to the holy places of their world, dancing at shrines and bathing naked in cold mountain streams. They purified themselves, and were stained, and purified themselves again, over and over, wearing down their faults like the stones underneath their feet. 

At the time, he'd wondered what it would be like to drop his responsibilities and possessions and take up their gleaming staffs and patched robes. He fantasized of endless wandering through a foreign land where his past had no meaning other than what he chose to give to it. Now here he was in the desert on a pilgrimage of his own, a hundred klicks from the ruins of his childhood home, but no less alien and strange because of the familiarity. 

Greed, hate, and delusion lead straight to the dark side, to the corruption and degradation of all he loved and held dear. But it was so very hard to give them up completely. No matter how he fought to erase them, they kept creeping back into his thoughts, poisoning his life with their whispers of dissatisfaction, of his own righteousness, the endless lists of how others had wronged him.

He was so lost in thought that it took him a surprisingly long time to realize they were being followed. 

"Sand People," he whispered. He and Tor both looked up, scanning in all directions, but there was no sign of them. Yet the flicker he'd detected in the Force was unmistakable. "Far away. Behind us." 

"Is that a problem?" Tor asked quietly. 

"I... don't know." There had been no trace of anger or fear in the sending; only an intense caution and curiosity. "I think they're wondering what we're doing here." 

Tor hummed in satisfaction. "Good," she said, and turned to keep going. "Let me know if that changes." 

"I will," he said, though her attitude puzzled him. Did she understand what the Sand People were, how dangerous they could be? He'd grown up hearing tales of the Sand Peoples' raids, seen the damage they had done to his neighbors' homesteads, fought with them aboard the _Eye of Palpatine_. He knew from firsthand experience that they were unpredictable and that underestimating them could be deadly. Wasn't that was why she wanted him here, to benefit from his expertise? 

Or was _he_ the one who was misinformed? Did Tor know something from her studies of planetary ecology that gave her such confident?

"I've had a lot of dreams about them," he said, apropos of nothing. 

"Prescient dreams? Or ordinary ones?" 

"Ordinary--I think," he said. "They're always the same. I'm back on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , along with a whole host of Sand People. I have to fight them, or else they'll take Callista away from me." 

"Did that actually happen?" 

"Parts of it. There _were_ Sand People on board; the computer made an automated stop on Tatooine to pick up an Imperial garrison that was no longer there and got a bunch of Sand People and Jawas instead. The Jawas immediately started to pick the ship apart for salvage, and the Sand People barricaded themselves in some of the upper quarters and destroyed everything they could get their hands on. They did attack us once, but it was Cray who was with me then, not Callista." He laughed at the memory, though he had not thought it funny at the time. "It was a nightmare to get them into escape pods so we could destroy the ship--" 

His companions--especially Threepio--had been skeptical that he could pull it off, and wondered openly why he'd bothered to save them. Only Callista had understood; after all, she'd given up her own life to protect so many innocents thirty years before. It was the Jedi path, and he had no regrets that he'd followed it. Even if it meant rounding up an entire clan of belligerent desert warriors who fought his efforts to save them. 

"How'd you manage that?" Tor asked him. 

"We got them drunk. Very, very drunk. Whatever they're like underneath their masks, their body chemistry approximates ours enough to respond to alcohol. After that, it was easy--but I don't envy the New Republic techs Leia assigned to repatriate them _at all_." 

"So you don't think your dreams are a warning about the future, then?"

"To be honest, I haven't been able to sense the future at all recently. It comes and goes in flickers; it's not something I can control very well. If I did, I wouldn't have made such a hash of things with Callista--" 

"Or you did the best you could, and it wasn't meant to be," Tor interrupted. "Stop blaming yourself for everything, Skywalker. Callista made her choice to leave, and that's her responsibility, not yours. And besides, you've told me that foreknowledge is a tricky business. Isn't that how Palpatine and C'baoth and all those other dark Jedi you've faced met their downfall, because they _thought_ they knew how things were going to turn out in the end?" 

He couldn't argue with her because it was true, but it was still tempting to try. With a sigh, he pushed the impulse away. "Yes, it is. Maybe this is why the old Jedi who weren't with Djinn Altis were so keen on avoiding attachments." 

"And it's why the Nezhidi monks on Sawarra are celibate," Tor agreed. "But you wanted something different for the new Jedi. You wanted them to be integrated into families and communities, not separate from them. And it's not always going to go smoothly. You're getting a taste of what you're asking from your students, the challenge that you've set them up to face. And you can handle it, Skywalker. I know you can." 

He could. That was the most obnoxious part of the whole business. He'd faced down so many genuine threats and obstacles in his life--he might well be the strongest being in the galaxy, now that Yoda and Ben and his father were gone. Yet here he was, unable to handle the fact that two of the most important relationships in his life had failed. That _he_ had failed the people he cared about where it mattered most. 

_All my ancient twisted karma--_

He nodded. There wasn't much else he could say to that. Once again, she was right, but that didn't mean he had to like it. 

But there was nothing else to do except keep walking. 

***

There was life tucked away in the every shadowy nook and corner of the Waste if you knew where to look for it. Shielded from the direct heat of the sun, tiny ferns peeked out of rocky crevices, where drops of water briefly pooled overnight before evaporating in the heat of day. The undersides of their leathery fronds were packed with spores that wafted on the winds for miles in search of that rarity of rarities, a suitable spot to take root and grow. Lichens ate away at exposed rocks, grinding them slowly to powder over the course of centuries, and the dust was food for the rock lice and sand roaches that skittered underfoot. They, in turn, were hunted by tiny glistening snakes that writhed and flailed when disturbed in their efforts to escape pursuit. 

There were spiders with a hundred eyes building intricate webs to snare their dustmite prey. There were spiny, barrel-shaped succulents, and weedy rosettes of bitter kitten's-paw that burst forth with thousands of papery flowers that exploded at the slightest touch of the breeze. There were emerald-eyed rodents that lurked in dens underneath the surface, popping their heads out at intervals to snatch rosin-flies out of the air or sniff for danger. Three-eyed glass lizards twisted from under the rocks, their translucent eyelids shielding their wide-eyed gaze from dust and grit as they rocked back on their upper limbs in mating dances. 

Other life-forms were more difficult to spot, but no less dangerous because of it. Tucked away out of the scorching heat of the twin suns, they dozed underneath the surface, waiting for twilight. Luke would bet his left hand that hives of womp rats and the dens of canyon krayt dragons were carved in the tangled passageways they passed. He hoped that he and Tor would be sheltered out of their reach when first twilight came, and the predators awoke.

As the shadows lengthened, the two of them turned a corner to find their passage blocked by an avalanche of boulders ten meters high, halfway up the sides of the canyon. The rock here was red and gleaming sandstone, the color of smouldering embers in shadow, sparkling like fire wherever the light touched it. 

"So we climb now?" Tor asked beside him. 

He shook his head. "I can cut it away with my lightsaber. It won't take long." 

Tor nodded, and settled down to rest twenty meters from the base of the rockslide, her pack on the ground beside her. Slipping off his own pack, he laid it at her feet, and strode over to the blockage, studying it closely for a few moments before he ignited his lightsaber and got to work. 

As he expected, it didn't take long to cut a pathway. As one boulder fell aside, another shifted in its place, but though the pile was tall, it was relatively thin and the lightsaber cut through the stone with only the faintest hint of resistance. 

He was halfway through the rockslide, when the breeze shifted and a familiar, acidic stench hit him square in the face. Womp rat scat--no question about it. Even after two decades away, the scent was unmistakeable. 

And where there was scat, there were bound to be rats, a whole hive of them. If they'd chosen this rockpile as a site for their colony-- 

His danger sense flared seconds before he heard the scrabble of paws on stones and a howl as one of the rats caught his scent and alerted the others. "Tor!" he shouted, but that was all the warning he had time to give her before six rats wiggled out of the nooks and crannies of the boulderfield and attacked him. He caught sight of five more rushing past him towards her, but there was no time to deal with them before the first wave was upon him. 

Ever since Uncle Owen had first let him fly a Skyhopper when he was twelve, Luke had hunted womp rats in the canyons near Anchorhead. But strafing the rats from the air was a very different matter from tangling with them on foot. Two meters long, with razor-sharped teeth and poisonous saliva, womp rats were fiercely territorial and bound to the other members of their colony by a complex web of kinship and pheromones. They were fearless to the point of suicidal self-destruction in favor of protecting their own and their tenacity was legendary. Even a canyon krayt would think twice before attacking a group of them, preferring to scavenge what it could from their kills or pick off one of the weak or elderly if given a rare opening. 

Fortunately, Luke had not been idle in the years he'd spent off-planet, and the womp rats were unprepared for the storm that hit them. 

He sliced through the closest rat, and swayed back to catch the next with his blade. Both crumpled neatly into pieces and were dead before they hit the ground. The glowing blade cauterized the wounds instantly so there was no spray of blood, only the faint scent of charred meat. 

He reached out through the Force and slammed the other four rats against the boulders before they could approach him. Only one rat died in the first impact; he had to hit the other three a few more times before the whimpering ceased. Their bodies fell as his attention shifted, and he spun around to see how Tor was faring. 

She crouched behind a boulder, blaster braced against it, firing away at the oncoming group of rats with mixed results. She wounded one, and it stumbled with a squeal of pain and paused--only to keep charging forward with its fellows. Even as the rats rushed her, she let go of the blaster, and reached for her staff, keeping the rock as cover between her and the rats for as long as she possibly could. 

She hit the first rat squarely on the head with her staff. It fell and did not get up again. Even as Luke shouted her name, she ducked and two of her pursuers slammed into each othe, hissing and spitting at each other long enough for her to slam her staff into the side of the fourth rat, hard enough to knock it out of the air and force it to the ground with a thud. By the time the two rats tussling on the ground had disentangled themselves, she was on them. Two more blows and the scuffle was over before Luke had taken a few steps forward. 

Almost. The rat Tor had wounded with the blaster was still coming, though it was limping and slow. Its beady red eyes were fixated on her, dark green saliva trailing from its mouth as it staggered forward. Tor dropped into a defensive crouch, but didn't attack, waiting for the rat to come to her. She calmly met its gaze with quiet, implacable calmness--radiating an aura of assured self-knowledge that Luke had only ever experienced with Yoda and Ben. 

"Go back," Tor said quietly, gesturing away with her staff. "There's nothing here for you. Go back, and live another day, or fight and die, like your fellows."

To Luke's astonishment, the rat hesitated--only to turn and flee back into the rocks with a piercing squeal, as if Tor had stabbed it through the heart. Then common sense overrode his wonder, and he turned to survey the rocks in front of him, the lightsaber whirring in his hands. He retreated back towards her, bracing for an ambush that never came.

Only when he was almost at Tor's elbow did he lower his saber and extinguish the blade. Then the rush of adrenaline that had sustained him ebbed abruptly, and he gasped for breath, even as Tor leaned on her staff, and used her free hand to brace his shoulder. 

"What did you do?" Luke asked. "I've never a rat retreat like that before--" 

Tor shrugged, and pulled him over to sit on the boulder next to their packs. "I don't know how many animals understand spoken language, but I know they understand intention. I made it clear that I wasn't going to kill him--I think it was a him, no obvious mammary glands--unless he provoked me. Not being completely stupid, he decided to retreat." 

"It," Luke corrected automatically. "Most members of the hive are sterile unless the queen or her consort die, and then the biggest neuter will take their place. It's all controlled by pheromones." He gestured to the closest rat with his foot. "The royal pair doesn't usually leave the nest--they send out the less dominant rats to bring them food. You'd know it if you saw them because they're usually much larger than the neuters." 

Tor glanced down at the two-meter long rats stretched out beside them. He didn't need the Force to know what she was thinking: two meters was already big enough. 

"They're good eating if you take the poison glands out," Luke volunteered. "In case, you know, we run out of ration bars." 

She shook her head. "No time. We need to keep going. Can we make it through here now without another attack?" 

"I think so. I counted eleven rats, and colonies aren't usually bigger than twelve or fourteen. Two or three usually stay behind to take care of the queen. Unless we stumble into the nest by mistake, they'll leave us alone now. Give me a minute to catch my breath, and I'll get this rock slide out of our way." 

Tor nodded. They sat together on the boulder for a few minutes in silence before Tor patted his shoulder and got up to retrieve her blaster. 

Even as Luke rose to his feet, he stretched out in the Force to see how the Sand People had reacted to the battle. As expected, they were still out there, curious but unsettled. He hoped the scuffle with the womp rats had given them pause. 

With any luck, this business with the rats would encourage the Sand People to let their uninvited visitors pass unmolested through the Jundlands--or at least think twice before setting an ambush.

***

It took him fifteen minutes to clear the way forward--this time without any further interruptions. In the process, he found the main entrance to the rat nest tucked away in the side of the canyon wall, surrounded by huge piles of scat that the neuters had pushed out of their communal tunnels. The scat itself was bone dry, but the stench of musk and acid-dissolved rock was strong enough to make him gag. 

Despite his clumsy footfalls and the buzzing hum of his lightsaber as the boulders shifted and stirred, there was no hint of activity from within the hive. The surviving rats were safely ensconced in the burrows they'd painstakingly gnawed through solid rock, not willing to venture out again after enduring such heavy losses. He'd grown up thinking of them as dumb beasts, and yet there was a feral intelligence in the hive as a whole, even if their individual sense of self-preservation was lacking at times. 

He returned to where he'd left his pack to find Tor on her knees in the sand a few meters away, staring into space with blank eyes. Her hands were pressed together in front of her heart as she chanted a long string of nonsense syllables that ebbed and flowed together in a whirring drone. There was something curiously familiar to it, and after a moment, memory stirred: a funeral service on Sawarra when Tor had taken him to visit the local temple. 

He sat down beside her and did not interrupt, using the time to take more sips from his vaporator and eat another ration bar. After several minutes, the droning reached a crescendo, and sharply fell. After a few more phrases, Tor bowed her head and fell silent at last. When she looked up again, she released her hands, and smiled when she saw him watching her. 

"You were chanting for them?" he asked, gesturing towards the fallen rats. 

She nodded. "Given that I stole their lives, it was the least I could do." 

"They tried to steal yours first, though." 

"I'm not saying that I regret defending myself. But I'm responsible for their deaths nonetheless." 

He nodded. He understood all too well. He hadn't heard the screams of Alderaan's destruction across space and time, as Ben Kenobi had, but since then, he'd grown strong in the ways of the Force and heard more than he cared to at times. War and circumstances had forced him to kill so many people--sometimes from a distance, as with the shot that destroyed the Death Star, and sometimes personally, with his own lightsaber. He'd sworn no vows of non-violence, and he would do it all again in a heartbeat if he had to--but like Tor, he didn't relish the prospect.

"Were you chanting the whole time?" 

"Hardly," Tor said, gesturing to her pack. She rose to her feet and began going through her gear again. "I made some notes in my journal, took some holos for reference--though about taking samples, but I think that would be more trouble than it's worth; they're awfully heavy." 

"They are," Luke agreed, shouldering his own pack. "How far until we reach our destination?" 

She pulled the little metallic sphere out of the folds of her jacket and set it on her open palm. A holographic map flared into three dimensions, their path a blinking red against a sea of shifting topographic lines and colors. "Four klicks as the ship flies--but at least double on foot. The canyons are a twisty maze, and I'll have to be careful to keep us from getting lost up ahead. There are some tight turns yet to come." 

They set off together at a brisk pace through the cleared passageway, leaving the rats to the tender mercies of whatever scavengers--possibly their own kin--who would find them at twilight. Though his mind initially raced ahead to the trials to come, yet somehow his thoughts circled back to the pile of dead rodents behind them. 

"What were you chanting? For the rats, I mean?"

"The same thing I say to all beings who have passed: I wished them better luck on the next round of the wheel and I dedicated any merit of my chanting and their memory to the benefit of all beings." 

Reincarnation. Luke wasn't sure how he felt about that idea--or how the Jedi had felt about that. He'd seen many ghosts in his life--Ben, Yoda, his father Anakin--but their appearance had raised more questions than it answered about the afterlife. Only Ben had ever spoken to him, and only about Luke's personal life, never anything even remotely metaphysical. 

"You think they'll be reborn?" Luke said after a while. "As rats, or as something else?" It seemed like ill luck to be born as a womp rat, but he didn't want Tor to think he was insulting her beliefs by saying so. 

"Nobody knows what happens when we die," she said. "Not even the Jedi. Unless you've been holding out on me because I'm not an official member of your little cult." 

Luke laughed, in spite of himself. " _I_ certainly don't. The old texts I've found so far talk about how afraid the Sith were of death, and how a true Jedi has nothing to fear from it--but they're pretty sparse on the details. Callista--" He stumbled over her name, and it took a moment for him to force the words out. "Callista said Master Altis told her that we become one with the Force. Whether we believe in it or not." 

If Tor noticed the hiccup, she didn't press him. "And if we all are one with the Force, is it so strange to think we might emerge from it in another form?" 

"No. But I don't see how it matters we don't retain some memory of who we once were in the process." 

"Many long and bitter wars on endless worlds have been fought on precisely that question throughout millennia," Tor agreed. "It depends on who you ask. Some sects say, yes, the soul is eternal and endures forever, unchanged in its essence despite its shifting material forms. Others say, no, it will dissolve along with the body, and vanishes, or is re-formed into something new." 

"And what do _you_ say?" he pressed. Like Yoda, it was challenging to get Tor to commit to a straight answer, but he was determined to give her as good as he got. 

Predictably, she refused to take the bait. "I'm a scientist, Skywalker. The only way to find out for sure is to experience death myself--but not, I hope, today." 

Oddly, his heart was lighter now, and he wasn't exactly sure why. "Me, too," he said at last. "Which is why we should try to avoid any delays for a while. As soon as the suns start going down, this canyon will be packed with scavengers wanting to eat them." 

As he feared, she found this news far too exciting for his taste. "Krayt dragons?"

"I promise you, you don't want to see them," Luke sighed. "They can grow to be up to ten meters tall and thirty meters long. And they're the smaller of the two species. The greater krayts that live out in the big dunes are even bigger." 

"And what do you do with such fabulous wonders?" Tor asked.

"Avoid them as much as possible," Luke said firmly. "They're foul-tempered and aggressive and they'll eat anything that they can catch. Including _us_ if we're not careful." 

"I _like_ dragons," Tor said simply. 

"Not these ones," Luke countered. "Trust me." 

She sighed. "You're too quick to dismiss this place," she said at length. "Just because it's so familiar to you, you think that no one else should be interested. I wish you'd show your sekkai some respect." 

The Sawarran word she'd used was far more loaded than the simple Basic translation--one's birth planet--would suggest. Sawarra was far more than a place to its inhabitants--it was sacred in its entirety, and few of its inhabitants would leave it by choice, no matter how dire their circumstances. In choosing exile over death, Tor had in one sense become apostate from her very culture. Even now, after the fall of the pro-Imperial regime, there were many who resented her for her abandonment--not to mention the frequent trips off-planet she continued to make in times of peace. 

He resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. "Tor, not everybody grows up in a temperate paradise the way you did. Not every world is a Yavin or an Endor or Ithor. Sometimes rocks are just rocks." 

"That's not the point! It doesn't matter whether it's a floating desert or the airless vacuum of deep space; it's still your _sekkai_ , and it's full of wonders. But you can only see them if you _look_." 

"My eyes are fine," Luke protested. "There's nothing special on this arid dustball, that's all." 

She sighed again and turned away. "Maybe that's why you don't see anything, then." 

Luke opened his mouth to protest--but managed to stop himself before any words came out. He was being contrary for its own sake, rather than out of any deep-seated connection to the issue; it wasn't worth a fight. Arguing with Tor was like arguing with Yoda. It never helped, and he was stuck eating his words and apologizing later when the evidence proved him wrong. 

Given how much the general public--and many of his students--were in awe of him, and hung on his every word, such comeuppance left him feeling like a boy again, dazed and confused and reeling in the Dagobah swamps. But he was too stubborn and serious to laugh at himself right now, and driving away his only companion on a point of trivia was foolish, so silence was his only option. And that was hard enough as it was. 

So he let the matter go as they walked, and walked, and walked, ever onward into the twisty maze of the Wastes, until his temper eased and he was calm again. 

***

Tor paused at a crossroads, blinking and frowning at the holo-map in her hand, until Luke cleared his throat. "Are we lost?" 

"Modern technology says _yes_ , but ancient technology,"--here, she held up a simple compass--"says no. What does the Force say?" 

"I haven't asked," Luke said, nonplussed despite himself. "I thought you knew where we were going." 

"I do," she said. "I just need to think about it, that's all." 

Luke looked up at the sky above. The suns had vanished below the lip of the canyon, and the shadows were growing larger by the minute. There was a tense, edgy feeling to the air, and he didn't like it. The bleached bones lying scattered in the rubble around their feet didn't help. Even as Tor muttered and fumbled with her devices, the growing sense of pressure in the back of his skull deepened, heavier and heavier by the minute. 

It wasn't the Sand People. They were still being watched, Luke was sure of it, but any stalkers were far away, and at least for now, he could sense no ill-will from them. But if not them, then--

"Sandstorm," he whispered. "A big one. Tor, we've got to get under cover." 

"Hmm?" Tor looked up, clearly distracted. "What did you say?" 

Luke looked around. Fifty meters up one of the passageways was an overhang, similar to the one they'd used in Beggar's Canyon to shield the _Destiny_ from prying eyes. It wasn't perfect, being open on three sides, but there was a big rock underneath it that might shield them from the wind if they were lucky. "Let's go! Now!" 

The shelter, when they got it up, proved to be an old-school pop-up--practically an antique--nothing more than a dome of reinforced plastic with a zippered door. It was barely big enough for the two of them let alone their packs. But it kept them out of the direct reach of the sand and wind, and for that Luke was grateful. 

Fifteen minutes passed, and nothing happened, though Luke's headache deepened more and more until he thought a herd of banthas were rampaging through his skull. He wondered if Tor would shift and complain, but she was perched cross-legged on her pack to give him what space she could, her eyes closed in concentration, trusting him to give the all-clear when he was ready. 

Time dragged on. Luke was beginning to think he had mistaken a migraine for a sign of danger, when he heard the wind pick up outside the shelter--followed by a growling, ominous roar as the storm drew closer. He couldn't help but smile. 

Forget the Force. He'd gotten headaches every time there was a sandstorm in the air, as did Aunt Beru and occasionally Uncle Owen and a few of his childhood playmates, particularly if they were human. There was something about the way those storms wreaked havoc with the atmospheric pressure that did it. Whatever it was, that sensation had saved his life more than once. 

Tor opened her eyes, but didn't move. "It's coming closer," she said. 

"That's a sandstorm for you," Luke said, stretching out to lay on the floor, his hands tucked under his head for support. "We might be here a while until it blows over. And--" 

He hesitated, but only for a moment, before he cleared his throat and pressed on. "And since we're here, I might as well finish my story--"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The old Corellian shany ("I live my life in widening circles") is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (from his _Book of Hours_ ). 
> 
> Ben's rescue of Luke and Windy on their dewback is a reference to an episode from the Dark Horse comic "Luke Skywalker's Walkabout". 
> 
> Luke's previous visit to Ben Kenobi's hut is depicted in my fic [The Circle is Complete](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161276/chapters/30101160). For an alternate take on Luke's family drama in a different continuity, check out my fic [Family Matters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285991). 
> 
> _All my ancient twisted karma_ is from the Zen Buddhist Verse of Atonement. 
> 
> Luke getting the Sand People drunk in space actually happens in _Children of the Jedi_ by Barbara Hambly! Too good not to mention in this fic.


	6. Chapter 6

The quarter-size holo of Han Solo flickered for a moment, then stabilized as Leia Organa settled in next to her husband and faced the projecter.

"Hi, Han, Leia. What crisis is the New Republic facing today?" Luke asked, leaning back in his chair. He hadn't expected a call from them, but it was a welcome relief from slogging over the accounts that Mara had sent him. 

"Nah, we're good," Han reassured him. "Hadn't heard from you in a while and wanted to see how you and Callista were doing." 

"Fine. We're fine," Luke said, more shortly than he meant to. 

Leia frowned, but didn't comment. "Leg still bothering you?" 

"A little. It's mostly healed now. The hot springs helped," he replied. With a pang of guilt, he realized he hadn't spoken to either of them since he'd returned to Yavin with Callista and Mara. Most of what he considered obvious would be fresh news to them. 

The next question, also from Leia, was inevitable. "How's Callista adapting to her new life?" 

"Good," he said automatically, then caught himself. He didn't have to dissemble with either of them. "I mean--she still hasn't recovered her powers. It upsets her, but we're working on it. We'll get there eventually. It's just going to take more time than we thought, that's all."

"So what's eating you then?" Han leaned forward, rubbing his knuckles together as if to punch the source of Luke's unease into submission. 

Would that it were so easy. "Well, if you really want to know--it's Mara. Ever since we got back from Coruscant, she won't talk to me unless she absolutely has to. Business is fine, all of the guests love the hot springs, the academy is running smoothly, and the students are doing well. But she keeps shutting me out, and I don't know why." 

Briefly, he sketched out that last few months, culminating with the story of Jedi Talent Night. "I don't understand it," he concluded with a sigh. 

Leia and Han exchanged meaningful looks. "Maybe she just wants some space from you two lovebirds," Han said at last. "It's not like there's any place on Yavin you can go to get away from it all. And you _are_ livin' in some pretty tight quarters over there." 

If memory served correctly, Han had slept on the _Falcon_ with Chewie rather than cram himself into the Rebellion barracks when the Main Temple was a secret Alliance base. Luke thought about reminding him that conditions had dramatically improved since Han's last visit, but decided not to let himself be distracted by a tangent. "I guess so. I just... hoped she and Callista would be friends, that's all." 

"Give it time," Leia suggested. "It's only been, what, three months now?" 

"I _have_ given it time. Three months is plenty. And Mara _still_ doesn't want to talk to me... so it's got to be something else." 

"Speaking of Mara," Leia said, abruptly changing the subject. "Ghent wants you to comm him." 

"What? Mara's slicer friend?" 

"Now the newly installed Crypt Chief at NRI," Han said. "Quite a coup for them, to be honest. They've been trying to lure him away from Karrde's organization ever since the Thrawn campaign. Now's he's gone respectable, like I have. For the money, of course." 

"I think he fell in love with our computer systems, but you take what you can get," Leia said, trying and failing to hide her smirk. "One day, we'll get Karrde, too, but for now--" 

"What does Ghent want with me?" Luke was intrigued. He wasn't sure he'd ever personally spoken to Ghent aside from that one time en route to Yavin IV on the _Hunter's Luck_. He knew Leia had found him to be a useful ally in the New Republic's fight against Thrawn, and Karrde wouldn't have hired anyone sloppy or incompetent. And Mara and Callista both liked him--

Leia shrugged. "He didn't say. I assume it wasn't something pressing, or else he'd have reached out to you more directly." 

Han's gaze shifted away from the projector, towards someone out of range that Luke couldn't see. "Hey, Winter, thanks for bringing the kids over. Jacen, Jaina - you wanna see your Uncle Luke?" 

A pair of squirming four-year-olds in matching orange jumpsuits ran into view. "Hiya, Uncle Luke!" Jaina shouted, waving enthusasically at the camera. 

"Bye, Uncle Luke," Jacen added as an afterthought. Then he and Jaina vanished out of the frame, giggling hysterically as they fled. 

"And that was a fly-by-night from our children," Leia said, rolling her eyes as she glanced down at the chronometer on her wrist. "Luke, I'd love to talk more, but Fey'lya will throw a fit if I'm late to this latest meeting. Take care of yourself, all right?" 

Han nodded. "What she said, kid. Don't work too hard." 

"Don't worry, I'll take it easy," Luke promised. "Talk to you again soon." 

With a buzzing crackle, the holos vanished as the call ended. He settled back in his office chair again, wondering what business the newly instated NRI crypt chief could possibly have with him. 

He hoped it wasn't a crisis. Leia and Han had insisted that everything was fine, but Ghent didn't strike him as the sort to bother anyone without a reason. It was Ghent, after all, who had set Mara hot on the trail of Roganda Ismaren, just in time to rescue him and Callista after the _Eye of Palpatine_ 's destruction... 

Somehow Luke didn't think Ghent was calling now to just to chat. Call it a Jedi hunch. 

There was nothing to do now but in the number for the New Republic Crypt Chief and find out directly. Despite not having an official position in the New Republic military for years, Luke was pleasantly surprised to discover no one had bothered to change all the old access codes for Rogue Squadron. As a result, he bypassed most of the bureaucracy with minimal fuss. 

"Is that you, Jedi Skywalker?" said Ghent as the comm flickered again, tugging a strand of long unbound hair out of his eyes. His blue hair didn't show up so noticeably on the holos--they made everything look blue, converting the slicer into a lanky monochrome of washed-out color. " _Excellent_." 

"Leia's a very efficient messenger, but it's faster if you comm me directly," Luke deadpanned. "What's going on?" 

Ghent looked away, suddenly awkward and furtive and looking younger than his twenty years. "Look, you didn't hear this from me, okay? But I'm worried about Callista."

"Callista?" Luke hissed, startled beyond all reason at Ghent's declaration. "What? Why?" 

"She's been asking about illegal drugs," Ghent said. "Rare, expensive ones. She wants me to get her some through Karrde's connections." 

"I didn't think you particularly cared about legalities," Luke said. "Or prices." To anyone else, it would have been rude, but Ghent didn't handle subtleties well. 

"I don't," Ghent agreed, no offense taken. "The problem is that all the drugs she wants are _dangerous_."

"Dangerous? How so?" 

Ghent fidgeted, still unwilling to meet Luke's eyes. "I'll send you a list. Look, I just want to make sure she's all right. Just--make sure she's all right, okay? Please" 

"I will," Luke agreed slowly. Dread twisted in his stomach as his mind raced in a thousand different directions, all of them dark. 

"Good. I don't want anything to happen to her," Ghent said.

"Me, neither," said Luke. "Thanks. I think." 

"No problem," said Ghent earnestly, and broke the connection. 

Luke slumped back against his seat and stared into space for a long time, pondering the message and the implications. He didn't like where this was going. Ghent's list popped up in his inbox with a cheery ping as promised a few minutes later, and its contents only deepened his anxiety. 

Every single drug on the list was was rumored to amplify psychic powers in humans. Some, like bota, specifically mentioned the Force; others, like blackdream acid and seerspice, were more run-of-the-mill hallucinogens whose users claimed prescient visions and superhuman strength. Ghent had been right to worry: all of them were dangerous, with side effects ranging from violent hangovers and uncontrollable muscle spasms to death--not to mention expensive and addictive. 

He stared at the screen. Surely, she wouldn't be this desperate. Surely, she would have _told_ him--

" _Fuck_ ," he said at last, and went to find Callista. 

***

He found her in their shared quarters, engrossed in her datapad. She looked up, startled, as he approached, and snapped the screen shut, but it was too late--he'd seen everything he needed to know to confirm his worst fears. 

"Why are you looking at this?" Luke asked, even though he knew. "Seerspice is _dangerous_ \--Han's told me stories about smuggler friends who have _died_ after taking it--"

"I should think _why_ would be obvious," Callista snapped.

"Tell me anyway," Luke said wearily, flopping down beside her. Even if he hadn't promised to keep Ghent out of this, he wanted to hear it from her own lips. 

She turned away from him, unable to meet his eyes. "I think it might help me use the Force again, Luke. I'm so tired of struggling. I miss it so much--and to see your students growing stronger every day, so close and yet out of my reach--" 

"I know," he said gently, reaching for her hand. "I know. But drugs aren't going to help. Not like this. Trust me." 

"Do you know what it's like, though?" she asked, jerking away from him. "Do you _really_ know what it feels like to wake up every morning and not feel _anything_ at all? To be numb and blind and deaf to all the _life_ around us--" 

"I do," he protested. "When I was on Myrkr, I couldn't use the Force at all, because the ysalamiri blocked it, and--"

He started to say it was like losing an arm, but he'd lost an arm, and it wasn't anything like that. It was a stupid metaphor, anyway. 

"What?" Callista's face went white. "Those lizards in the dojo? The ones that Traitakh is always tending? They block the Force?" 

It had never occurred to him she didn't already know. "Yes." 

"And you didn't think to tell me--" She was shaking. She took a deep breath to calm herself, but the shaking didn't stop. "All that time I spent around them, working to regain my powers and no avail-- Luke. How could you? Why didn't you _tell_ me?" 

"Callista, I'm so sorry, I had no idea---" Luke took a deep breath. He couldn't think of an adequate response. "I'm sorry," he repeated. 

"No wonder the students dislike them so much," she said after a long moment. "I thought they were cute." 

"They are that," Luke agreed. "We keep them around as a training tool of sorts--but mostly because Tor likes them. Though they can be very useful in reigning in anyone with delusions of grandeur." 

"Like Kyp." Callista folded her arms over her chest and stared at him, a cold fire in her eyes. 

"He got better," Luke corrected. "And, to be fair, he was manipulated by the ghost of Exar Kun for most of it--" 

"I can't _believe_ you didn't tell me," Callista was not to be distracted or deterred by his attempts to change the subect. "All this time, when we were sparring, and I beat you--" 

"Callista--" he begged. _Don't do this. Please--_

"--I didn't realize you were bringing yourself down to my level. How very _generous_ of you." 

"Callista--!" 

Her anger left him stunned and gaping, unable to come up with an appropriate response. He gasped for breath. It was all too sudden, too much--

She pushed past him out the door of their quarters and he let her go. Everything was too raw, too painful for him to try and reach her now. He forced himself down onto the floor, leaning against the wall for support, and followed his breath for twenty minutes until he was calm enough to think rationally again and go after her. 

He found her curled up against the two uneti trees in the temple courtyard, eyes closed and face blotchy with tears. She didn't react to his presence even when he settled down beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. 

"I'm sorry," Luke said, and meant it. "I should have told you." 

This time, she didn't pull away from him. "I'm sorry, too," she said at last, slumping against him in defeat. "Sorry about the drugs. About losing my temper. You're right. The risks aren't worth it. I was just so desperate, I thought--" 

"It's all right," he said, stroking her forehead, leaning forward to kiss away the tears. "I understand. Just--don't keep me in the dark, okay? Don't shut me out like this again." 

She wiped her face against her sleeve, and gestured towards the tree trunk at her back. "I always think that if I just sit out here long enough, I'll hear them talking to me the way I used to. But it's always so quiet. So very, very quiet." A woolamander howled in the distance, nearby and she shook her head in wry despair. "You know what I mean. Nothing inside my head but me." 

Luke nodded, unwilling to speak lest he say the wrong thing and drive her away again. 

"Luke, it's such a miracle to be alive after all that I've been through--the Empire defeated--to have found _you_ \--I can't believe that it's real. Sometimes I think I'll wake up back in the _Eye of Palpatine_ 's core, or on the _Chu'unthor_ with Master Altis, and this is all a dream." She took a deep breath. "The terrible thing is that I don't know if I want to wake up or not." 

"Sssh," he said quietly. "I can't change what's happened or how you feel -- but I'll be here for you, as long as you need me to be. It's you I love, Callista, not the Force in you--" 

"Hold me?" she whispered, reaching out to embrace him. "Please?" 

He did. They sat together through the afternoon, as the glowing sun and red gas giant of Yavin Prime danced in the sky and the woolamanders roared back and forth at each other in the jungle. In the back of his mind, the two uneti trees whispered quietly to themselves of clouds gathering on the horizon, and the coming rains. 

***

In the weeks that followed, Luke and Callista settled back into their old routine, but something had broken between them. Though their undeclared truce held and neither mentioned the drugs again, the peace between them was fragile and raw, as if any sudden movement would trigger another conflagration. He didn't know how to reach her, didn't know how to say the words she desperately needed to hear, and she didn't seem to understand him when he tried. 

So he said nothing to her, or she to him, and the days passed. 

He was changing, or Callista was changing, or maybe they both were, spiraling away from each other at a rapid clip that defied his sense of time and space. He didn't want to change, yet he was helpless to stop his drifting or hers. So they sat together in the quiet of the meditation hall and in the steamy pools of the Teacher's Bath, entwined their bodies in the silent darkness while the students slept, while the unspoken distance grew widereven as their physical closeness remained unchanged. 

And still Mara would not talk to him. 

***

As the guest season drew to a close, Luke found himself looking forward to the practice intensive, if only so the silence would be absolute and impartial, rather than a sign of his failings. The more experienced students grew boisterous and uproarious in anticipation, as if seeking to rid themselves of excess energy before descending into the quiet. The newer students, unsettled by the anecdotes they heard from teachers and peers, were more subdued but no less anxious for it. 

Luke had learned the hard way there was no adequate way to prepare anyone for the intensive. He did his best to explain the rules then tossed them in along with the others and intervened only if he had to. Some would do well with this teaching style and others would be more challenged by it. The only way to know which ones would stumble and which ones would flourish was to do it. 

At least this year Tor would be here to assist him; the intensive drew heavily on Sawarran monastic tradition and her ten years at Akkan-ji had served him well in the past. But as the days crept by and she did not return, his anxiety deepened and would not abate. 

So when the distinctive roar of a sublight engine in atmosphere interrupted the afternoon work period three days before the start of the intensive, he was out of his office in record time, ready to greet her in the docking bay. 

He made a quick detour to the kitchen to retrieve a flour-coated and confused Callista and drag her along with him. Her tension only deepened after he explained his purpose--he knew she dreaded introductions to anyone who had known Cray, but there was no help for it. 

As the gangplank of the _Destiny_ dropped to the ground with a steaming hiss, Luke had to admit that he was skittish himself. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of mistaken identity, especially not when his own relationship with Callista was so fragile. Nor could he shake the persistent, nagging fear that Callista's presence might trigger Tor to distance herself from him as Mara had done. 

He took Callista's hand and squeezed it, in a gesture meant to comfort himself as much as it did her. She bit her lip, her eyes flicking from his face to the ship and back, clearly wishing she could run. But she held herself still and steady, with the grace of one who had seen and suffered enough to know the only way out was through the fire, whatever the cost. 

First off the ship were three of Tor's graduate students, ferrying a heavily bandaged colleague on a floating stretcher. They moved so quickly that Luke and Callista had to leap to one side to avoid a collision. 

"What _happened_?" Callista asked, as the students fled towards the medbay, shouting hurried apologies in their wake. 

"Nest of piranha beetles right as we were packing up to head out," Tor said, striding down the gangplank towards them. "They were on Mi-yan in seconds once he pulled out that last camp stake. Nothing a round in a bacta tank can't fix, but it's a hell of a way to end a field season. I had to give him several shots of anesthesia to keep him from screaming all the way here." 

The ramp closed behind her with the telltale whoosh of hydraulics, swirling steam from the cooling engines in every direction. Her grey coveralls were stained and torn in several places, and there were smudges of dirt across her hands and most of her face, but her face was calm and measured and her tone surprisingly light under the circumstances. 

Luke winced at the mention of the beetles. In the early days of the academy, he'd been bitten by a solitary worker, but managed to get away before its panicked pheromones had alerted the rest of the colony. His left hand--the one that was still flesh--had swollen up to twice its normal size and ached for days. It wasn't until Corran had stumbled into that same nest a few weeks later that he realized he'd been lucky to come away so unscathed. "He's allergic to their venom, then?" 

"Based on his reaction? Almost certainly," Tor agreed. She stopped short, taking in Callista's presence and Luke's protective stance at her side. "But I believe I am forgetting my manners--" 

"Callista, this is Dr. Tor Mendoza," Luke said, gesturing from one to the other. "She's the botanist I was telling you about, the one who grew out the uneti trees for us to plant. Tor, this is my partner Callista Masana--" 

"Callista Ming, now," Callista interjected, staring into Tor's eyes with the fierce intensity of a cornerer predator, ready to spring. "I'm _not_ Cray." 

A long pause. Tor met Callista's gaze evenly, studying her with the same measured calm usually reserved for her specimens--or Luke himself. "Not you're not," she said at last. "But you look very much like her." 

"Yes," Callista said, sticking her chin up in defiance. "I do." 

Another long pause, as Tor processed this information with an equanimity Luke couldn't help but envy right now. Her verdict, when she delivered it, was brief but to the point. "I can see there's quite a story here. What _have_ you two been up to in my absence?" 

Relief flooded Luke. She wasn't going to pull away from him the way Mara had. He hadn't lost her friendship, too. "I'm so glad you're back," he said quietly, dropping Callista's hand for a moment as he stepped forward to embrace her. 

Tor laughed, and met him halfway. "Me, too, Skywalker, me too," she said, as she pulled away, chattering with her usual energy. "It was wonderful to have six uninterrupted months in the field--I think we've discovered several thousand new species this time!--but for the moment, I'm happy to be civilization again, or at least what passes for it in these parts. I'd love to stay and chat, but there's all this paperwork I have to fill out now that I'm within sensor range of a working HoloNet, and there's Mi-yan's injury on top of that. They all had to sign waivers before the university would let them come out in the field with me, but you know how it is in academia. I've got to file an injury report, have it signed in triplicate, or else the risk management department's going to be breathing down my neck until the end of time--" 

"Will he be all right?" Callista interrupted. "It looked pretty bad from what I saw--" 

Tor shrugged. "A few hours in the bacta tank and stronger antihistimines out to do the trick, I think. He's in a lot of pain, but I don't think there will be any permanent damage. He's learned the hard way to watch where he puts his hands and feet out in the field; you never know what's lurking underneath. The pirahna beetles are nastier teachers than I am, but very effective ones. He'll be fine. But I am _so_ looking forward to a long soak in the hot springs once I finish with all the bureaucracy--" 

Luke couldn't control the sudden sense of panic that threatened to overwhelm him as she moved away. "Tor--" he said, and stopped short, unable to think of anything coherent to say. 

She turned, sensing what he did not say, and favored them with a brilliant smile. "Come by the nursery tomorrow afternoon-- _both_ of you--and we'll talk. I have a feeling there's a lot to discuss, and I'm looking forward to hearing all about it over a decent cup of a cha. But _after_ a bath, all right?" 

Luke nodded. To his surprise, so did Callista, her tension abating. The two of them watched Tor until she disappeared from sight, each lost in their own thoughts. 

"You were right. I like her already," Callista said at last. 

"I hoped you would," he said, unable to hide his relief. Tor's arrival hadn't solved his problems, but at least there would be someone else to talk to now. 

And maybe--just maybe--she might have some ideas about what he could do about his problems. After three months doing his best to keep his head above water, he needed all the help he could get. 

 

***

Much to Luke's annoyance, the next morning dragged on with agonizing slowness. As soon as the work assignments were handed out, he slipped away from the crowd of students out to the plant nursery, hoping Callista was already there. He hadn't seen her since breakfast, and it was unusual for her not to join the rest of the Academy for lunch and the work period.

He was relieved to spy a mob of blonde hair over the nursery benches as Callista poked tentatively at a mass of neon pink succulents spilling out from their trays onto the table. The tangle of yellow flowers emerging from each rosette were so thick and heavy that the additional weight had flipped them on their sides as the stalks twisted in every possible direction at once. 

"Hey," Luke said by way of greeting. 

She looked up, startled, and straightened visibly as he approached. "Luke. Can you come to the dojo at the end of the work period?" 

"Of course," he said automatically, before his mind caught up with the implications. "You're not staying for cha?" 

"I've had six cups since breakfast. I came early. But there are some things I need to do this afternoon before it's too late, so--I should probably get started. But after that--" 

"Oh--all right," he said, oddly disappointed in spite of himself, though he couldn't articulate why. He made a point of respecting Callista's privacy by not digging too deeply into her emotions with the Force, but he couldn't shake the feeling she was hiding something. It would be awkward if she'd had a falling-out with Tor-- 

"I hope you two got along," he ventured. How badly could they have clashed if she'd stuck around for six cups? 

"Yes. Well." Callista's smile was sincere, but mixed with pain; Tor clearly hadn't blunted her words. "She was very insightful. I have a lot to think about now." 

"I know what you mean. She can be intense. Well, let's catch up at the dojo later--" 

But she was already striding away, as if she hadn't heard him. 

Luke sighed. They hadn't sparred since Callista had learned the truth about the ysalamiri--which might explain her ambivalence now. He hoped a morning with Tor had persuaded her to forgive him for his inadvertent omission about the lizards' true nature. At the very least, it was a step in the right direction. He'd missed training with her. 

He picked his way through the maze of overloaded benches and potted palms edging into the aisles, dodging the tendrils of a particularly large and hungry sticky-dewbush and vaulting over a solid mass of thorns that he didn't remember from any of his previous visits. Eventually, he found Tor leaning over the uneti cuttings, cooing soft nonsense syllables in Sawarran at them. Though they remained still and motionless to the outward eye, they harmonized with her in colors and textures only Luke could hear. 

_Shadow, shadow,_ the little trees whispered as he approached. _Dark, dark! Shade... water?_

An eclipse was due this afternoon, in which the gas giant of Yavin would block the sun, casting everything into deep red shadows for hours until the planet drifted further along in its orbit. Luke had experienced this celestial event hundreds of times since the founding of the Academy, but it was always stunning. From their mutterings, the uneti cuttings anticipated its coming, too. 

"Hello, Skywalker," Tor said by way of greeting. "Callista told me her side of things, but I'm sure there's far more to the story than she let on. You _do_ live an exciting life, don't you? Let me pour you some cha, and you can tell me all about it--" 

***

"Now _that_ I remember," Tor said quietly, jerking Luke back to the present. His headache had abated in direct proportion to the storm's approach; now that the howling winds were upon them, he was almost himself again. "For someone so eager to talk, you were surprisingly quiet." 

He stared up at the curved canvas ceiling, lost in thought. "It turned out I preferred tales of your botanical exploits to re-hashing my own problems," he said at length. "Or maybe I still hoped they would solve themselves if I left them alone."

"It depends on the problem," Tor agreed. "But in your case, that wasn't a helpful strategy." 

"Yes, well." Now that he was on the cusp of the worst of it, it was hard to go on. "Since Callista had told you the main points, I figured that was enough for the time being. It was enough to drink cha and help you re-pot your specimens and not have to think about myself for a while. And I _was_ interested in your research. Although you must admit that risking your life to sample that variegated bromeliad in the upper canopy is _exactly_ the sort of thing that makes the university bureaucrats hate you--" 

She laughed. "Coming from _you_ , Skywalker, that's rich. You're lucky your Academy is a private enterprise and not an official arm of the New Republic, or else you'd be in just as much trouble as I am." 

"Well, that was why we did it," he conceded. There were other reasons why he'd shifted the new Jedi order away from its old associations with galactic politics, none of which where relevant now. He still had an unfortunate amount of paperwork as head of the Academy, though Mara had shielded him from the brunt of it before she'd walked away--

As he'd feared, Tor wasn't going to let him change the subject. "But when the work period was over, you went to meet Callista at the dojo." 

"Yes," he said, dread pooling in his stomach as he braced himself to keep going. "I did." 

***

"Luke, it's not working out." 

She stood before the window that took up half the southern wall, silhouetted against the red, globe of Yavin that filled half the sky with the eerie twilight of partial eclipse. Everything that wasn't shadow was filtered through the crimson haze, as if blood were leaking into his eyes from a sudden blow to the head. 

He stared at her in confusion, his heart hammering in his chest with grim foreboding. "What--?" 

"I will love you to the end of my life," Callista said softly. She turned to face him for the first time since he'd stumbled into the dojo a few moments earlier. "But you can't be a part of it anymore. Not now. Maybe not ever." 

He couldn't breathe. He was melting, skin, flesh and bones falling away under acid, dissolving in a puddle on the floor. He was dizzy, his thoughts scattering in sudden panic, vanishing into the blood-filtered light. He was dense and solid, far too heavy for his mass, and he was light enough to fall to pieces in the first puff of wind. 

He would have been less surprised if she had drawn the lightsaber at her belt and stabbed in him the heart. 

But he shouldn't have been. A thousand little quirks and tics and edges of conversations flooded through his mind, a thousand glances and puzzled non sequiturs that had puzzled him at the time but were all too obvious now. This wasn't an impulsive decision. This moment had been a long time in coming--one he had desperately avoided looking at until it was far, far too late to halt it. 

"I'm sorry, Luke. I'm so, so, sorry." Sorrow warred with compassion in her eyes as she dealt the killing blow. It was small consolation this victory gave her no pleasure. "I don't know what else to tell you." 

The irony was thick, dense and tasteless enough to choke him. She apologized for hurting him - in the same breath as she refused to relent. She'd had the same durasteel glint in her grey eyes when she'd betrayed him on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , rather than let him save her life. She condemned herself to die, but she'd survived against all odds--saved by Cray's suicidal desperation and a leap of faith--to come back to _him_ \--

Only to throw it all away. For his own good, of course. 

It always came down to that, didn't it? What _she_ thought was best for _him_. 

She'd never even asked him what _he_ wanted. 

She'd made this decision without consulting him, and she expected him to lie down and take it, like the punching bag of fate he was. He knew the role he was to play--smile and thank her for her time, cool and calm and collected, like the Jedi of old--and it rankled. He hadn't asked her for this. 

There came a moment in every battle where the mind failed and instinct took over. He'd trained so hard to poised and objective, but he'd rarely practiced what to do when his emotions overcame him. He hadn't let anyone get under his skin like this since his duel with Vader on the second Death Star when his father had threatened Leia. 

He was speeding towards the edge of a cliff, from which there was no return--but even though he knew it was futile, he couldn't stop himself, couldn't let go of the desperate hope that words could bring her back from the brink. 

"You could tell me why," he managed, his voice cold and stiff despite the burning in his lungs. As long as he stayed numb, he could speak coherently without descending into howling madness. 

If he let himself feel anything more, he would fall apart, and he couldn't fall apart. Not here. Not now. Not with her. 

He couldn't lose her. 

"Luke, please don't do this," Callista whispered. She shifted in the red glare of eclipse-light, enough for him to see her shaking. "I don't want to hurt you." 

"How can you hurt me more than you already have?" Anger flared as he spoke, and it was an effort to force himself back to a neutral tone. "Please. At least tell me why." 

Callista twitched, all grace extinguished under the intensity of his stare. "It's not you. You've been wonderful. I'm so grateful to have met you, to know you, to spend time with you. Luke--it's been such a dream. But I have to wake up now, it's time for me to move on. There are things I need to do that you can't be part of--" 

"Like what? Callista, I understand if you don't want to stay at the Academy--but Kam and Tionne and Mara and Corran can take care of things on their own, I don't _have_ to be here--" 

"No, no. It's not that," Callista said, eyes flickering now to the door, like a restive bantha about to bolt. "Or at least not all of it. My powers haven't come back yet." 

"Callista, I told you, that doesn't matter to me, I've told you over and over again, I love you for _you_ \--" 

"Stop!" she cried. "If you really want to know why, then at least _listen_ to me, damn it!" 

He froze, stock-still, the plea dying on his lips as he hung suspended in the silence between them and tried to remember how to breathe. 

"I told you about how Jedi in my tradition were not encouraged to develop romantic relationships outside the order," Callista began slowly. 

_Yes, what of it?_ he wanted to say, but he knew better than to interrupt her now. He nodded.

"But I didn't tell you _why_. Or that now and then, when the matter came up, the student in question would petition their teacher to consider an exception, and agree to abide by the decision. Sometimes the master would advise yes, and sometimes no--but it generally worked out well enough in the end. But sometimes it didn't." 

His sense of dread deepened. He didn't want to hear her out, couldn't bear the pain of what was coming, but he couldn't stop her now without losing her even more than he already had. 

"There was a man I knew--a few years ahead of me in his training--who petitioned Master Altis to marry a childhood friend whom he'd reconnected with after a visit home. Master Altis was concerned about the match, but ultimately agreed, and they were married. When this man attained his Knighthood, he took a posting in a different sector and his wife went away with him. For a long time, all went well enough, though we never heard from him." 

Luke, not understanding the connection, was growing impatient, though he kept his emotions ruthlessly in check. 

"We didn't know what had happened until he killed her." 

He stared, mouthing the words he couldn't speak, caught in the horror of it. _How_ \--? 

"If we had been there, we could have stopped it. But we didn't know, and she didn't know how to tell us what was happening until it was too late. It wasn't until it was all over that we learned how possessive he became of her, how he edged closer and closer to the Dark Side out of jealousy and fear, until at last she tried to leave him, and he stumbled over the edge into the abyss. He broke his vows and used his gifts to force her to obey his every command. She was strong-willed, but he was stronger, and his fear and anger and desperation overpowered hers, and he stripped her of her mind and agency and made her his slave." 

Callista took a deep breath and kept going. "One day, she broke free long enough to leap from the balcony of their apartment into the speeder traffic below. She died instantly. His control shattered and he went berserk, destroying everything in sight. In the end, it took three Jedi to bring him down. I was one of them." 

Oh, she was so cruel. So righteous, so just. This was how she would break him, piece by piece, dismantle him with horror stories of failure. She clearly didn't know him as well as she thought--

"The local judges ruled his wife's death a suicide, but we knew the truth," Callista continued. "She wouldn't have leapt if she thought she had any other choice." 

He found his voice at long last. "And that's why you don't want to be with me? Because you think I'll hurt you like that--?!" 

" _No_!" Callista shouted. " _Never_ that, Luke. _Never_. You are the best person I've ever met. There is such goodness in you, and I tremble before it. But there's an imbalance between us, and I'm afraid. I'm so helpless compared to you. I'm so vulnerable. It nags at me, and I hate it, I hate what I am right now. And until I resolve it, I'll have no peace. I'm sorry." 

"Callista--" 

"And as long as I am with you, I am a convenient target for anyone who hates you. I can be manipulated, brainwashed, used by your enemies, and I can't defend myself against them. Not as I am now." 

"Callista, _please_ \--" 

She pressed on, ignoring him. "And there's the Dark Side, Luke. I never told you this before, but I have felt its shadow hanging over me ever since I woke up in this body. It offers the way back to my powers, to solve everything if only I give in and take the easy road. And I'm so tempted--you saw that, with the drugs, how close I came. But if I give in to anger and hatred, I lose myself--and you, too.

"So I have to go. If I am destined to lose you no matter what path I choose, then I choose to follow the light at all costs. Even if it means I must do it alone." 

"Callista," he said softly. "If you fell, I'd come after you." 

She smiled at him, a sad quiet smile that made his heart twist in his chest along with her words. "That's what I'm afraid of." 

Buzzing filled his mind. He couldn't process anything outside of her face, her voice, and the blood-red twilight. 

"I will love you until the day I die and beyond, but I will not pull you into that shadow with me," Callisa said. "One of the guests has agreed to give me a ride off-planet. I've already packed my things. We'll depart as soon as I can get to the docking bay." 

So that was what she'd been up to during the work period. Nausea filled him, but he managed to recapture enough of his wits to object. "I understand if you want some time alone, Callista, but that doesn't mean we have to end this--not like this--" 

She cut him off with a gesture. "I'm not going to ask you to wait for me, Luke. I don't know how long it will take for me to do what I must. D'you think I could rest easy at night knowing you were pining away for me? And who knows what my life will be like, if and when I'm ready to return? It's not fair to either of us to string it along so far. Trust me, it's better this way. You won't be lonely long--" 

"Is this about Mara?" he demanded. "There's nothing between us, Callista, that's ridiculous, I--" 

"I didn't say there was," Callista retorted. "All I meant was that you're a good person, Luke, a wonderful partner, and there are plenty of people out there who can see that besides me. You'll never lack for companionship if you want it." 

"But I want _you_ ," he said. 

She met his gaze calmly, steadily. "It's not your place to decide." 

" _Callista_ \--" 

"And I want your word that you won't try to follow me," she added. 

Almost, he lashed out through the Force at her. Fantasies ranged through his mind, a thousand permutations on a single theme. It would be so easy. She was defenseless against him. He could persuade her with a wave of his hand, it wouldn't take much at all. It was so tempting--

Almost. 

He sighed. Yes, he could keep her with him, if he chose. But if he did that, if he manipulated her for his own selfish gain, he would prove that her fears were justified after all. He would be no different from that fallen Jedi four decades earlier, who had destroyed his partner and himself rather than let her go.

If he was truly the man she thought he was, he had no choice but to let her walk away from him. 

He'd told her, over and over again, that he would do whatever it took to help her. He'd promised her that, and he meant to keep his word. He'd just never thought it would mean watching her disappear from his life again.

But if that was what she wanted--

"You have my word," he said, the words dull and empty in his mouth as he surrendered to the inevitable. 

She hesitated for a few seconds before striding towards the door. As she passed by him, her steps slowed and he thought she might reach out to embrace him----but he shied away from her, and averted his eyes, and the moment was lost.

"Good-bye, Luke," she whispered, and was gone. 

He remained where he was, re-playing the conversation over and over again in his mind, unwilling to believe she she would go through with it. Only when the distinctive roar of sublight engines pierced his daze did he turn, just in time to see the outline of a pleasure yacht rise up against the blood-red sphere of Yavin. Only then did he have no choice but to accept that she had left him. 

Slowly and carefully, he knelt until he could hold back his shaking sobs no longer. He collapsed in a tangled heap on the polished floor, still bathed in the ruddy, eerie glare of the eclipse. 

He didn't care what happened to him anymore. He was a ragged knot of pain in the dark, nerves and muscles stinging in the aftermath of his failure, even as his emotions swelled and overwhelmed him. He was alone, just as he had been for his entire life before Callista had come to him, and now she had walked away--

And she'd taken a piece of him with her. 

***

"You all right, Skywaker?" 

He jolted awake, curled up on the dojo floor with every muscle aching in complaint. For one shining moment, confusion reigned as he fumbled in blankness--only to be crushed down by the weight as memory returned.

Callista. Gone. 

She wasn't coming back. 

He didn't remember falling asleep, but the stiffness in his body spoke of several hours unconscious, as did the soft grey shadows of standard twilight spilling in through the dojo windows. The gas giant of Yavin had already set, and the eclipse was over. Now the first pale glimmer of stars was visible beyond the clouds skirting the horizon.

He lurched upright, embarrassed to have been caught so off-guard and vulnerable, but it could have been worse. At least it wasn't a student who had found him. A student would have asked awkward questions he didn't care to answer.

As it was, he didn't have to look in her direction to know a puzzled and bemused Mara Jade stood over him, her arms crossed over her chest as she waited for him to recover his equilibrium. Whether he was floating in his crippled X-wing in deep space or fresh from a week in hell on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , she had a knack for finding him at his worst. Dozing on the dojo floor, raw and red-eyed from weeping paled by comparison to their previous encounters--although his grief over Callista's departure had set him back far more than any physical wound.

The irony was that under other circumstances, he would have been delighted by the opening Mara had given him--the overtures to their first real conversation in weeks. Now he couldn't summon the energy. His chest was raw and inflamed, his throat was dry, and all he wanted was to retreat into his own misery and never come out again. He'd endured three months of silent, passive-aggressive avoidance from Mara, and now-- _only_ now--did she want to talk. About _his_ well-being, of all things. 

"What do you care?" he said, as he got to his feet, more sullen than defiant. He realized his mistake too late to take the words back and start over. 

Mara's eyes narrowed, but she stood her ground. "Sorry, I didn't realize you'd settled down for a nap. I had hoped to talk before now, but you slipped away this afternoon, and no one seemed to know where you were." 

_Don't play that game with me_. She had always been able to find him, and it annoyed him when she pretended otherwise. No doubt she'd been waiting to get him off-guard and alone now that Callista was gone-- 

(He wasn't being fair, but he was tired of being fair, Callista hadn't been fair, _life_ wasn't fair--)

"Look, Skywalker--I wanted to let you know I won't be here for the practice period. Kyp and Cilghal are ready for their first errantry to Rodia, and I told them I would accompany them." 

He stared at her, unable to conceal his disappointment and befuddlement. "What? Why?" 

She shrugged. "It's time--past time for Cilghal, she's _been_ ready for months. As for Kyp... he's finally at the point where I'd consider leaving him unsupervised without reaching for a fire extinguisher. Don't get me wrong, Skywalker--he's still a poor excuse for a human being, but I'm surprised how much he's grown on me. And I don't think he'll disgrace himself a second time." 

Translation: Kyp was doing very well indeed, and not even Mara, a notorious perfectionist, could find much to complain about. It was the culmination of two years of hard work in the aftermath of the Exar Kun Debacle, when Luke's more relaxed approach had failed and she'd taken on Kyp's training.

"Besides," Mara continued. "Three months of meditating in the rain is not my idea of fun. I did it once and that was more than enough. I don't care how much character it builds." 

"All right," Luke said, since there didn't seem to be anything else to say. He trusted Mara's judgment more than his own when it came to Kyp, and Cilghal had been holding back for Kyp's sake more than anything else. He'd have to sign off formally once the three of them returned from Rodia, but at the moment, he didn't have the mental capacity to think beyond the next two minutes. "The practice period won't be the same without you, but I understand. Have a good trip." 

He expected the conversation to be over, in keeping with their recent interactions, but she wasn't finished. "And I won't return to Yavin when their errantry is over." 

It took a moment for the implication to sink in--then all the blood drained from his face in a rush. "I don't understand," he said, hoping against hope he was wrong. 

"I won't return to Yavin," Mara repeated evenly. "I've been here for three years, ever since you invited me out on this mad venture to get the place up and running. When Kyp graduates, I will have completed the job you asked me to do and it will be time for me to move on."

This wasn't happening. This _couldn't_ be happening. Not tonight, of all nights. He couldn't handle this. First Callista, and now Mara--

"It's not your fault, Skywalker," Mara was saying through the dull roar that enveloped him. "I've given it my best shot, and teaching's just not for me. I miss trading, I miss piloting my own ship in the open skies, everything. Karrde and I have been talking about it for a long time, and I--" 

"You _can't_ ," he whispered. 

Only the Emperor had ever succeeded with telling Mara Jade what to do, and he was no Emperor. She raised one eyebrow, calling his bluff. "Really, Skywalker? You gonna lock me up in a shed with a bunch of ysalamiri until you can wear me down? If I recall correctly, that didn't stop _you_ when Karrde held you on Myrkr, and I can promise you it's not going to stop me now." 

"You said you would stay." The words were dull and ponderous in his mouth, childish and ineffectual, but they were all he had.

She shook her head. "I never said forever." 

"You have obligations--" 

"And I'll finish the job I started. Fair's fair. But I won't be taking another one from you when I'm done. I want to fly the galaxy and see the stars, not sit around on this rock and meditate all day. I've dreamed for years of starting my own business, and life is too short to put it off forever. If I don't go now, I--" 

"What about bringing back the Jedi order? What about you, and me, and Corran, and the students? What about the millions of beings that are counting on us to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy? What _that_ dream?" Luke said, gesturing to the dojo--and by extension, everything on the jungle moon. 

"Those are _your_ dreams. Not mine." 

It would have been kinder if she had decked him. He doubled over under the blow, shaking, and it was an effort to breathe. He pulled himself back up, his posture rigid, trying and failing to conceal the shaking in his hands. He was so close to losing control in front of her now. He couldn't bear it the pity in her eyes if he broke down and sobbed. 

"What a sick joke," he managed. "First Callista, now you--"

Now it was her turn for puzzled concentration to transform into realization. "Oh. Oh, Skywalker. I'm so sorry." 

But he wasn't buying it. "No, you're _not_! Don't lie to me, Mara - you barely talked to her since she came here, never reached out. If you had been more welcoming in the first place, maybe she'd still be here--!" 

It wasn't true, and he knew it. But he said it anyway because it _felt_ true, or at least what he wanted to be true in that moment. All the anger and rage he had suppressed with Callista erupted in a violent torrent, and he didn't stop it. At least with Mara, he could lash out in ways that he never dared with Callista--Mara could take it--

" _Well_ ," Mara said after a moment, as if Luke hadn't spoken. "Let me rephrase that. I'm sorry your relationship with Callista didn't work out, but its failure was none of my doing and I won't let you pin that on me." 

"You--" He couldn't bear another second of her insufferable logic. "You've hated her ever since she woke up in Cray's body, and don't even try to pretend that you haven't! You thought you did such a good job hiding your feelings behind those walls in your mind, but I know what you've been doing, I've felt it! I ought to rip them down and expose what a hypocrite you are--"

"Go ahead and try it, Skywalker," she growled. 

It wasn't a real invitation. He knew that, and so did she. Violating other peoples' mental and emotional space was not the sort of thing that Jedi did, no matter the circumstances. But she shouldn't have issued such a challenge if she wasn't serious about it--

There was no excuse for what happened next. If he'd been thinking clearly, he never would have done it. 

But he didn't think, he simply _moved_ \--

\--and slammed through her shields as if they were flimsiplast. 

If she had been expecting it, he never would have gotten through. But he'd called her bluff and caught her off guard, barrelling through any barriers she had set in his path before she had time to react. 

He was not gentle. Thoughts and sensations that flew past him at a dizzying rate, as he dug in like a howling vornskr for evidence, expecting to find contempt, disdain, ridicule, anything to prove that she despised Callista and was therefore responsible for her departure. Instead--

_\--he stood on the deck of the_ Hunter's Luck _as the battered escape pod opened a steaming hiss, filling the cabin with grey steam. A battered blond wreck of a man--jagged stubble coating his face and a haunted look in his hollowed blue eyes--hobbled forward as the smoke cleared. As he caught sight of a crumpled woman tangled in the crash webbing, his face shifted from grief to astonishment to exhiliration as he fell to his knees, batting at the webbing as if his life depended on it. Yet even as the woman rocked forward, he slowed his pace, delicately reaching out to help her up. As if she were the most precious treasure of his life, and any misstep would destroy shatter her forever--_

_\--and a deep wave of grief swelled up in Mara Jade's heart as she watched the drama unfold and realized that Luke Skywalker would never look at *her* that way--and that she hadn't known that she *wanted* such a thing until that very moment--_

_\--and with a whoop, the two lovers flung themselves into each others' arms, rocking and sobbing with laughter and relief as they clung to each other, lost in a passionate kiss with no care for anything outside the world except themselves--_

And Mara stood quietly and watched it all, gritting her teeth against the sudden onrush of emotions. grateful that they were so lost in each other that her stricken expression went unnoticed. Even as Organa Solo and Solo came up behind her, they froze in shock at Luke and Cray's passionate embrace. By the time anyone thought to look at Mara, her face was set, outwardly calm--

_All that time,_ she thought, with the small part of herself that was still capable of rational thought. i>All that time I thought I knew what I wanted--and I was wrong. I waited too long, and he went with *her* instead. Because of course he did. Skywalker wasn't stupid. Cray had beauty and brains in spades, clever, open, innocent, loving, everything that Mara was not. Whatever trauma they had gone through had clearly brought them together and now--

It didn't get better when Skywalker broke off the kiss and tried to explain to his audience that no, this wasn't Cray anymore, it was Callista, the spirit of a Jedi from the Old Republic who now inhabited Cray's body. If anything, his stammered explanations made that sinking void in the pit of Mara's stomach even worse. 

_A Jedi. A *real* Jedi_. Someone who had never bowed a knee to evil. Someone who could match Skywalker's bright, airy optimism and blithe spirit in ways that Mara never could. Someone who had received real, authentic training, not the half-assed Sith-inspired version that Mara had learned, the perfect partner to rebuild the Jedi Order with. Hell, the way they _moved_ together--as if they'd known each other for _decades_ , and not just a _week_ \-- 

Luke saw her pull away, then, how she distanced herself, how careful she was to avoid them both, walking the knife edge in every interaction to prevent herself from slipping and lashing out. He saw her wrestle with indecision on the eve of Talent Night, wondering if she could dance for him as she had once danced for the Emperor, and if that might, by some impossible chance, allow her to say what she couldn't put into words--

\--as she sat and stewed in the pressure cooker of her own impossible standards and self-loathing, flinching every time she encountered Skywalker and Callista in the corridors, holding hands, staring dreamily into each other's eyes, oblivious to anything outside the two of them, with no room for anyone else--

Well, she wouldn't intrude where she wasn't wanted. But she wouldn't stay and watch just for the hell of it, either. The galaxy was too big a place, and there were plenty of other things to do with her life than mope after a certain Jedi who didn't need her anyway--

Mara's body jerked under his onslaught. He saw through her eyes as she reached for him, but he was so wrapped up in the experience of _being Mara_ that he didn't register the attack for what it was until her fist hit his face. His nose snapped under the impact and the pain yanked him back into his own body. He staggered back with a yowl, his hands cupping his face in a futile attempt to shield himself. Blood streamed down his cheeks and down his throat and he collapsed to the floor, shocked and bewildered by what he had uncovered. 

In that moment, it was impossible to say what hurt more: Callista's loss, the unexpected revelations in Mara's mind, or the fact that he had irrevocably destroyed their friendship. The physical pain was a mere background note in comparison. 

" _Never again,_ Skywalker," growled Mara as she loomed above him. "D'you hear me? _Never again_ \--" 

For a fraction of a second, Luke thought she might hit him again. A part of him welcomed it, knowing how much he deserved it--

But to his surprise, she controlled herself with visible effort, and stepped back. 

"I think we're done here," she said. She met his gaze and held it deliberately for one long moment to emphasize her contempt, before she turned and strode out of the dojo. 

For a long time, he couldn't move. He lay on the floor where he had fallen, gasping and choking on his own blood, cursing himself over and over for a fool. His anger had broken along with his nose, and there was nothing left but regret and self-recrimination. 

He'd been wrong. So very, very wrong about _everything_. 

Mara Jade had spent five long years hating him, only to gradually relax her ire and become a trusted, integral part of his life--until now. 

But she couldn't hate him more than he hated himself. 

While he argued with Mara, true night had fallen on Yavin IV. Now he lay in darkness as the the buzz of night insects echoed outside the dojo. He was alone, more alone than he had been since that awful day on the Death Star when his father died in his arms. And this time, it was all his fault, he'd done it to himself. First with Callista, and now Mara--

A soft subtle whine interrupted his train of thought, the distinctive sound of thrusters in atmosphere. He didn't have to look out the dojo windows know the _Hunter's Luck_ rose overhead, carrying Mara and her two Knights errant off to Rodia, and he would never see her again--

Only when he could no longer hear the ship did he make any effort to rise, with a slow deliberation, as if he would shatter into pieces at the slightest disturbance.

There was nothing left to do, to say, to feel. He was numb now, raw and empty like the vacuum of space, and he would never be filled again. Not for him the luxury of forgiveness. Not for him the catharsis of tears.

Nothing was going to be all right, ever again. And yet he was still here, still going on in spite of it all. He didn't know what else to do. 

His life was hell, but he had no doubt he deserved it. 

***

Somehow he made his way back to his apartment, clutching his nose to stem the tide of blood. He didn't want to go back there, didn't want to see the rooms empty of her possessions, or the vacant space in the bed beside him, but he had little choice in the matter. Unless he fled into the jungle, there was nowhere else for him to go, nowhere else where he was guaranteed privacy. And the thought of anyone seeing him like this now was unbearable. 

Mercifully, the halls were deserted. Both students and teachers had adjourned to their quarters for the evening, and he saw no one. Their energies flickered like candle flames, distracted by sex or sleep or their own concerns behind their closed doors, heedless of the cloaked, solitary figure that passed by--

He locked his door behind him, and crawled into the 'fresher, setting it to the most intense setting without bothering to disrobe. He leaned against the tiled wall as the burning water soaked him, as if it could purify him of the guilt and the pain and the shame along with the blood. 

But he couldn't stay in there forever. Eventually, he shut the water off, stripping his sopping clothes on the floor and staggered to the empty bed still wet and dripping. He wrapped himself in sheets that still smelled of Callista and pulled the blankets over him, warding himself off against the world as best he could. 

With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine she was still here with him. If he rolled over, she'd be there, smiling at him--

It took a certain amount of mental stability to start a healing trance, and it took three tries before he succeeded and blessed unconsciousness took over. The last thing he remembered before the darkness took him was the naked hatred on Mara's face as she'd walked away.

He woke two days later in a pool of dried blood, with an irate Corran Horn demanding to know what the hell Luke thought he was doing. He didn't bother to answer. He was up and on his feet in time for the start of the practice period, an automaton going parroting the motions with no real heart. 

No one spoke to him. No one met his eyes or asked what was wrong. It was the practice period, and their hearts and minds had turned inward, just as he'd taught them to do. He was grateful. None of them would see him for what he truly was. 

He was their role model, their hero, the noble Jedi Master who could do no wrong--and a total fraud. 

The next day, the rain began in earnest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much of Callista's speech in her final scene is paraphrased from or alluding to her explanation of why she left Luke in _Planet of Twilight_ by Barbara Hambly. 
> 
> If you're curious what happens to Callista after she leaves Luke, you might be interested in my other fic, [In A Dark Time, The Eye Begins to See](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887072), which picks up where this fic leaves off.


	7. Chapter 7

There was nothing left to say. The wind howled outside the tent, an eerie wail in the darkness, a voice without breath filling the void left in his wake. He sat up, reached for the portable 'vaporator beside him, and took a sip that merged into a greedy gulp as the moisture hit his dry and parched throat. He and the desert were one and the same: drained and empty, the nadir of the world, devoid of life, doomed to an endless, eternal monotony of stone and sand.

Tor hadn't moved. Her face was lost in the shadows, her posture straight and tall, hands folded on her knees as she knelt beside him. The silence stretched out between them, broken only by the roar of the wind. He dreaded the rebukes to come, the scathing denouncement that he deserved. Now she knew everything; there was no place left for him to hide. Every moment ticking forward only postponed his fate.

"Oh, Skywalker..." 

He tensed, ready to meet the blow without flinching. He was that much of a Jedi, at least. 

"...I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize it was _this_ bad." She shifted forward, her hand coming out to his shoulder, strong and steady. "It must have been so hard, so hard to be alone. And you've borne such a burden in silence ever since..." 

Her compassion astounded him. He had been prepared for anger, condemnation, recriminations, mockery--maybe even a broken nose again--but not this. Nothing like this. 

His right hand--the mechanical one--came up automatically to grasp her hand on his shoulder, gripping it with extrahuman strength as if it were a lifeline, the only route to salvation. He slumped forward towards her, a sob escaping his lips as all the pent-up emotions burst out in a torrent, a flash flood to fill the rimrock canyon to the fullest. 

"Oh, Skywalker- _kiri_ \--" 

She pulled him forward into her embrace, her other hand tangling in his hair. He sobbed harder, leaning into her as he surrendered all control to the grief and regret that swirled inside him. He was a vast sea that could never be emptied; Tor was a rock, an island, the only stable point in the storm. 

She held him close and stroked his hair, as Aunt Beru had done so many years ago. She sang him lullabies in a language he barely understood, but the rhythmn and cadence needed no translation: a calming song of quiet and repose. _Hush, hush, still, still, no need to fear, for I am here with you_ , she said, and he clung to her words with desperation, his lifeline, the only way out of his self-created hell. 

Over and over again, she chanted his name, and with it the Sawarran honorific used between parent and child. _Skywalker, my son, O my son, my son. Skywalker, my son._ It was an intimacy that she had never granted him before, and he was frightened and eased in equal measure by the shift from their usual playful banter. 

Eventually the storm passed and all was quiet, both inside and out. His breathing slowed and he slipped into sleep. For the first time since he'd left Ithor with Cray and Nichos on the _Huntbird_ on that ill-fated jaunt to the Moonflower Nebula, there were no dreams. 

***

He woke alone in the shelter at dawn with the unmistakeable crunch of grit in his mouth. A thin layer of sand had somehow managed to penetrate the thick fabric, because this was Tatooine, and sand was inescapable. The silence was raw and piercing, like the hush before a krayt dragon's strike. There was no sign of Tor or her gear. 

He sat upright in panic and reached out to the Force more by instinct than conscious awareness. The spasm subsided when he found her a few meters from the tent, her mind an opaque, tranquil pool to his probe, her awareness in that one-pointed space that marked a mind in meditation. As his heart rate slowed, he took a few more sips of precious water from the portable 'vaporator and fumbled in his pack for ration bar, which he ate without tasting. Thus fortified, he ventured out of the shelter to face the world. 

Tor was perched cross-legged on a rock near the cave entrance, her bedroll jammed underneath her to elevate her hips over her knees and keep her spine straight. Her eyes were closed, her hands on her knees, and the green rakusu around her neck was a splash of vivid life amidst barren rock and sand. She was so still, he might have thought her dead, if not for the steady rise and fall of her chest. Though he made no attempts at concealing his crunching footsteps, she didn't move as he approached it. 

He knelt at the foot of the rock and waited, looking past her to the redrock canyon beyond. The sky outside was a pristine, cloudless blue, but there was no sign of either sun in the thin sliver of sky visible above. He was on the cusp of dozing off when she opened her eyes and stirred at last. 

"How do you feel, Skywalker?" 

The familial honorific had vanished, as if it, too, had been a dream. He didn't question it. In some ways, it was a relief to be back on their usual footing. The implications of the previous evening were still too unsettling for him to accept. 

"Empty," he said, because it was true. "Like I've hit bottom and there's nowhere left to go but up." 

She nodded. "Sometimes that's the best place to be. Hurts, though." 

"Tor, what do I do now? How do I _fix_ everything? How do I make it right?" 

"What do you think you did wrong?" 

Hadn't she _listened_ to anything he'd said last night? They had to get Mara back, they had to get Callista back, they had to make them understand that he needed them, both of them-- 

She let him ramble, an incoherent torrent of words pouring from his mouth, until he trailed off in silence at last. 

"Callista didn't do this lightly," she said at last. "The only reason she stayed for as long as she did was because she loved you, and she desperately wanted to make it work. It was hard for her to accept, too." 

"I can only imagine," Luke said savagely, knowing he was being unfair and unable to stop himself. "Next you're going to tell me something about 'a certain point of view'--" 

Tor pursed her lips in annoyance. "Would you drop your self-centered egotism and _listen_? Do you know what she said to me in the nursery the day she left? 'We are the weapons of the Force. We always have been, since the beginning of the Order; since people first began to understand the existence of the Force. I don't think Luke understands that.'" 

"I don't," Luke said, getting up and beginning to pace. It was a better outlet for his restless energy than sarcasm. "That's _not_ what the Jedi are at _all_. They--" 

"You may disagree, but that was her view of it. And who's to say she's wrong? All gifts are double-edged. They can kill as well as protect, hurt as well as heal. And she was suffering from it."

"I could have helped her if she'd _let_ me!" 

He stopped short, perilously close to losing control as his anger flared up, raw and raging. He let out his breath, let the pain drain away with it, until it was bearable again. 

Tor waited until he'd mastered himself again before she went on. "This was your first relationship, yes?" 

"The first that ever got beyond wishes and hope," he admitted reluctantly. There was his nascent attraction to Leia (embarrassing, in retrospect), and Gaerial Captison, the Bakuran planetary senator (less embarrassing but still awkward). The flirtation and jests with Teneniel, before she'd married Isolder; whatever closeness he'd had with Mara--and that was it, really. But none of that was relevant, was it? 

"Everything came on so fast--but it was like we belonged together, like we _fit_. I'd only known her for such a short time on the _Eye_ and yet I couldn't imagine life without her. I didn't think I could go on when I thought she'd died with the _Eye_ \--and then she came back, and all I wanted was to be with her, even when it was complicated. But for her to walk away now--after we _won_ \--"

"I'm sorry to be unsentimental about this, Skywalker, but romantic love is an addiction in the brain, no less potent than gambling or glitterstim. Unpoetic, I know, but it's true. You're in withdrawal now, and it's going to hurt until it's over. Stop reaching for Callista to fill the emptiness. You don't have to like her choices, but you have to accept them."

Kriff, she was insufferable. Did she have to be _right_ , too? He went back to pacing again, even as she pressed her point. 

"Are you the only person who could offer her what she needed, the only person who could decide her fate? You told me yourself when you started your academy that relationships were fine, it was the inability to let go of attachments that was the problem. By clinging to her, you hurt her--and yourself, as well. Isn't that what your father did with your mother?" 

"Leave my family out of this," Luke snapped.

"I would if you weren't so afraid of history repeating itself, of perpetuating your family dynamics. Yet here you are, heading down that same road--" 

"I faced my father--I embraced the darkness in him--in _myself_ \--"

Tor waved his objections away. "And you were right to do so. But that doesn't mean the struggle is over, or give you an excuse to indulge your temper now. That doesn't mean you own Callista or her choices. Let her _go_ , Skywalker." 

"But--" 

"You loved her. She loved you. That wasn't wrong. Love is never wrong. But she's not the only person you'll ever love, nor should she be. Maybe nothing else will ever be like this--and that's fine. But that doesn't take away from everything the world has to give you--or what you have to offer to the world. And if you loved Callista for _herself_ , instead of what she meant to you, you'll let her go to find her own way forward." 

"I told you, I gave her my word I wouldn't follow her," Luke said in disgust. "I intend to keep it." 

"You haven't really let go of her yet. You're still brooding," Tor said. 

He sighed, even as his anger roiled in his chest. As much as he hated to admit it, she wasn't saying anything he hadn't already thought of himself. It was harder to ignore when it came from someone else, though. 

He thought of Callista as he'd first seen her on the _Eye of Palpatine_ : words on a screen, a shimmer in the air, the echo of ghostly laughter in the dark. Of what she'd said to him when Cray hovered on the brink of death in suicidal despair, her spirit all but broken and Luke watched, helpless. " _Sometimes there is nothing you can do._ "

Sometimes there was nothing he could do, and he hated that. Hated her for that, too. 

"Most of my relationship with Callista was built on dreams," he said at last. 

"They were real to you," Tor said quietly. "I'm not going to discount that." 

"I wish they had been real to _her_." 

"That's not fair, and you know it."

The maddening part was that he knew where Callista was coming from, sort of. Sometimes there were things a Jedi had to do if they wanted to keep their integrity, their self-respect, their very identity, and sometimes--far too often, really--they had to do them alone. He'd walked away once before at Endor, gambled everything on a desperate quest to find the soul of his father with Darth Vader's mechanical shell. Not even Leia could talk him out of that one. 

And though she'd lost touch with the Force, Callista was still a Jedi. Still choosing light over darkness, even in the face of great temptation, and at great personal cost. Even if it meant walking away from him. From what they'd shared. 

In her place, would he have been courageous enough to do the same? 

"A Jedi does what they must," Luke said, conceding the point.

That thought lead him to another thermal detonator: Mara. Obsessing about Callista wasn't good for his mental health, but it was a hell of a lot easier than pondering the other disaster in his personal life. He took a deep breath. "And then with Mara, I--" 

"Well, there, I admit you royally screwed up," Tor said. "You're lucky she was just as embarrassed as you were or else she might have killed you on the spot. Not one for expressing emotions in a healthy fashion, our Mara Jade." 

Luke put his head in his hands. "I can't believe I went into her mind like that. I shouldn't have done it. I have to apologize." 

"That's an excellent start. I'm not sure it will be enough, but--" 

"--she'll never want to see me again," he finished. 

"It's well within her rights. You violated her boundaries, and she's protective of those, more than most. And from what you've said, she was struggling as much as Callista was these last few months to figure out who she was and what she wanted in her life. She needs time to figure that out, the same way Callista does. Until then--I don't know if she'd listen, no matter what you said."

He thought of what Tor had said back on the ship, about loving them both. "How long have you known?" 

To her credit, she didn't dodge the question. "I didn't _know_ anything for certain until last night. But the two of you have been dancing around each other ever since we met, so I can't say I was surprised, either. When both of them left and you fell into the slough of despond, I knew _something_ had happened. I just didn't know the details." 

"Why didn't Mara _tell_ me how she felt?" 

"She did. She's been telling you the only way she knew how for years now. Service. Loyalty. Dedication. Actions come easier to her than words, particularly the kind that involve emotions. Not to mention vulnerability." 

"I need to talk to her. If I can reach her, apologize, explain how much I need her, maybe she'll come back--" 

Tor shrugged. "Perhaps... perhaps not. There's only one way to find out." 

"I wish I could talk to her _now_."

"Good luck with that," Tor snorted, gesturing to their surroundings. They both knew any signal from here would be lucky to reach as far as Anchorhead, let alone halfway across the galaxy to Rodia. And any intrusion into her mind was the last thing that Mara would accept from him. 

He sighed. "I really made a mess of things this time, didn't I?"

Tor laughed, and rose to her feet in one fluid motion, shaking the stiffness out of her limbs. " _Life_ is messy, Skywalker. Terrible things happen every day--and so do beautiful ones. Who knows, you might look back at all this and think it was the best thing that ever happened to you." 

Luke glared at her. "Even from you, that's pushing it." 

"Who knows? Not me, that's for certain. Did you eat?" 

The sudden shift in topic disarmed him. He wasn't sure if the ration bar counted as food or not in her eyes, but it was the only sustenance they had. "Ye-es?" he hedged. 

"Enough talk, then. Let's get moving. We're going to find the trees today. I have a good feeling about this." 

***

As he stepped out into the canyon, Luke was filled with a curious lightness, as if local gravity had released him overnight. He might float. He might even fly. He was still drifting, but not so far or so fast. The weight that had pressed him down on him for the past month was gone, and every motion was easier. 

The worst might be over now, he thought with relief. Maybe Tor was right and some unexpected good would come out of this disaster--or maybe not. It was too early to tell. Spared the pressure of a decision for now, the only thing to do was keep moving. 

There was no further sign of any Sand People this morning. Perhaps they'd given up by now, or maybe the sandstorm had shaken them off the trail. Either way, it was a relief. One less hazard to worry about. 

This section of the canyon was marked by unexpected pits of fech-fech, patches of dry quicksand that could ensnare the unwary traveler. Tor stumbled into a patch before he could warn her off it, bogging down to her knees, but it was easy enough to lift her out with the Force and set her down on firmer ground on the other side. She bore the ride with more patience and grace than Artoo ever had, which he appreciated. 

"Thanks for the lift," she said, after he'd leapt across himself. "My first instinct was to struggle. But just because it's instinct doesn't make it _right_. It took me years to learn to relax into the difficulty, rather than fight it." 

Luke sighed. She wasn't talking about the fech-fech, and they both knew it. 

At least the dry quicksand kept him focused on the present. Otherwise, it was too easy to get hooked by endless speculation and recrimination about the past. He thought about what Callista had said to him about finding other loves and flushed. Of course Callista had picked up on Mara's feelings for him, and his own burgeoning attraction to his co-instructor. Another thing to add to the lengthy lists of ways he'd hurt her. 

Callista had left him knowing that he and Mara might well get together in her absence--and she'd gone anyway. She'd let him go completely, rather than hold him back in stasis, pining after her. 

Was it a betrayal of what he and Callista had shared if he moved on so quickly? If he and Mara resolved their differences and--

"You said it was fine to love them both," Luke called ahead to Tor. He meant it as a statement of fact, but it came out as more of an accusation. "What did you mean by that?" 

She turned to wait for him to catch up, shaking her head. "Stars, Skywalker, didn't I just get finished telling you that love doesn't begin or end with one person? Sometimes the difference is in space, sometimes it's in time, sometimes it's in kind... and sometimes not. If the three of you were willing to sit down and be straightforward with each other, it might be possible to work out an arrangement that all of you were happy with. No guarantees, of course, but that's negotiations for you." 

Luke tried to imagine the three of them sitting in the hot springs and talking it over, the same way they'd discussed other problems at the Academy. The mental picture ended up more like Leia's intense diplomatic negotiations in minimalist Coruscanti conference rooms than anything relaxed and friendly. He imagined both of them in his quarters, in his bed... okay, probably not at the same time. He couldn't imagine Mara, for one, being content with anything less than his undivided attention. 

He tuned back into the present as Tor went on. "In light of what you've told me, though, I think you should focus on damage control with Mara. Wait until the end of the practice period, and see what happens. Perhaps she'll come back with Kyp and Cilghal after all, and you can apologize in person. Or you can seek her out if she doesn't return. But I wouldn't do anything lightly, and I wouldn't do it now, while your emotions are still running high. Give it time." 

"I wish I could talk to her _now_." Luke repeated his earlier demand with more petulance than was appropriate for a Jedi of his stature and experience, but he didn't care. 

Even behind her veils and face mask, Tor's eye-roll was obvious. "Talk away. Or write poetry, that's what people do when they're in love where I come from." 

"Tor, your people write poetry about everything-- _literally_ at the drop of a hat. You have entire _party games_ for it." She'd made him play once during a drunken night in a teahouse: first in Basic, and then in Sawarran with a handicap to compensate for his ineptitude with the language. Needless to say, he preferred dejarik. 

"Beats brooding over your frustrated longings in silence," Tor said, scuffing up a cloud of dust as she narrowly avoided another patch of fech-fech. "I bet Kenobi wrote _lots_ of poetry in exile. I know I did." 

"If he did, I never saw it. I only knew him for such a short time--and he was only moderately more forthcoming in the afterlife." A wave of frustrated bitterness swept over him. He thought he'd left that all behind. "Dust and ashes, that's all I ever got from him. And certain points of view." 

"'Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone,'" Tor recited by way of rebuke. "'Yet many a man is making friends with death even as I speak, for lack of love alone.'" 

Luke sighed. "I loved Ben. I think he loved me too, in his own way. Our relationship was... complicated, that's all." There had been too many lies and missed opportunities for it ever to be easy and simple again. Sometimes it was easier when people died and _didn't_ come back. 

"I think you're too harsh with him," Tor said in her normal speaking voice. "He left you a great deal. I'm not sure you've realized it yet." 

"He's been dead for almost a decade now! How long am I going to have to _wait_?" Luke's voice broke and he fell silent, ashamed by his sudden display of temper. 

Mercifully, Tor let the conversation drop. 

He gave himself up to walking again, lost himself in the movements, in the empty air, heavy with the growing heat of the day, and the distinctive gleam of redrock stone. Thoughts of Mara, of Callista, of Ben, and even dangers like the Sand People faded away. He fell into a waking dream, the endless steps spawning visions familiar and foreign in equal measures. Water flowed over redrock, pooled at his feet, its moist coolness spreading upward through his entire body like a straw. Sunlight fell on his limbs but did not burn, and the gravitational pull of distant stars beckoned to him. Soft whispers, unintelligible yet compelling, echoed in the back of his mind. He was the bridge between heaven and earth, linked by a distant yet mysterious intelligence he couldn't quite pinpoint, yet all fear was beyond him. He lost himself in the sensations, and let himself be carried away, all fear beyond him. After the disappointments of the past and the pain of the present, it was a relief to lose himself in the calm, steady trance of their travel and let go of everything else. 

After another hour, the canyon narrowed to a thin sliver, barely three meters at its widest point. He trailed behind Tor, barely registering the transition. When they came to a sharp turn half a klick later, the holomap on Tor's wrist beeped red in warning. 

"We're here," she said in satisfaction, as she turned the corner--only to freeze in a double-take that would have been funny had Luke been prepared for it. 

"What?" Lost in his visions of water, it took a second for her reaction to register. Even as he came back to himself with a jolt, he could see nothing but redrock and her stunned expression. There was no sense of danger, but his hand went automatically to his lightsaber. He rounded the corner, expecting the worst--

And then he saw it. 

Ahead of them, the canyon widened in a dramatic sweep as shafts of sunlight spilled into its depths. Looming out of the canyon wall in the distance was a massive building carved out entirely out of redrock, ablaze with reflected brilliance. It was to the tiny cells of the Holy Brotherhood what the Imperial Palace on Coruscant was to Yoda's hut in the Dagobah swamps--an opulent display of power, wealth, and craftsmanship out of proportion with the wildness of its surroundings. The structure was topped by three rounded towers, decorated with complex geometric designs, supported by massive ridged columns, which in turn were supported by cascading stone steps to the canyon floor. It was a treasury, a fortress, an impossible enigma, that should not be here on a planet as coarse and empty--and _primitive_ \--as Tatooine-- 

And yet clearly, it had clearly been situated and designed by some unknown intelligence to trigger these sensations of awe and wonder from anyone seeing it for the first time. 

"I--I don't _believe_ this," Luke stammered. " _How--?_ " 

"Well," said Tor, choosing every word with care as she held up the monitor on her wrist and began scanning their surroundings, "I think we've found what the Sand People were hiding out here." 

"The Sand People built _this_?" Luke repeated, still in a daze. 

"Or their ancestors. This place doesn't look like it's been inhabited in some time. Come on, let's check it out. We've come this far, haven't we?" 

Lost in wonder, he followed. 

***

They found more buildings further up the canyon, though none as opulent or decorative as the first. Most were carved directly out of the redrock, but an amphitheatre and what must have a marketplace were open to the air. All of the structures were empty, with no evidence of recent habitation. Despite Luke's fears of ambush, there was precious little in the way of life anywhere. 

"Ah! An aqueduct," Tor said, pointing to a complicated series of pipes--all carved out of stone--running from structure to structure. "This seems promising. Let's follow it and see where the water came from." 

"Did you _know_ this was here?" Luke hissed as he caught up to her. 

"Of course not," Tor said, moving upcanyon at a brisk pace. "The map anomaly meant that _something_ unusual was here, but I imagined a hidden spring or secret oasis. Something relatively small and unobtrusive, not anything this dramatic. I'm impressed." 

"And you think the Sand People built it?" It was absurd to even ask the question--everybody knew the Sand People weren't capable of anything like this. They never constructed anything, only robbed and raided those who did. And yet--who else could have done it? He'd never heard of any Jawas in the Wastes, and smugglers or even settlers back in the boom years would never have ever created anything like _this_ \--

"Didn't you ever wonder why the Sand People were willing to fight and die to keep the settlers at Fort Tusken out of the Jundlands? This strikes me as a _very_ compelling reason. Perhaps they didn't want anyone to find this place." 

"But why?" Luke pressed. "They don't even _live_ here!" 

Tor waved away his objection. "Academic. Maybe this is a sacred site and they only visit only on special occasions. It would explain why they were watching us so closely on our approach." 

Luke was suddenly glad there had been no sign of the Sand People this morning. "Does that mean they'll attack us if they find us?" 

"A good question," Tor agreed. "Let me know if you sense anything, all right?" 

He nodded grimly, though at the moment there was no evidence of any threat. There were no enemies here, no signs of life--not even a nest of womp rats or a krayt dragon cave to trouble them. Even by desert standards, the silence was eerie. 

He kept thinking he heard something--soft whispers, perhaps, or the splash of water on stone--yet when he asked Tor, she only looked askance and shook her head. Sometimes light flared in his peripheral vision, or something feathery brushed, against his skin, yet when he turned his gaze, nothing was there. It reminded him of Callista, before she'd revealed herself to him on the _Eye of Palpatine_ \--but whatever ghosts that lurked within this lost city were intent on keeping their secrets to themselves, at least for the moment. 

If there was really someone or something out there, he meant them no harm--and hoped they would feel the same way about him. He'd fallen in love with the last spirit he'd met, and she him, but he didn't think he'd be so lucky a second time. 

It was probably just as well. His personal life was already complicated enough as it was. 

***

They followed the network of pipes for three klicks up the canyon, past the last carved building and out of the Tusken city (if that was what it was). Luke thought Tor would slow down, or at least pause for breath, but she moved at a brisk clip, her eyes alight with eagerness that they were so close to their quarry. Luke's confidence that the trek was a wild-bantha chase was badly shaken, and he no longer knew what to expect. Anything--even trees in the midst of the Jundlands--seemed possible now. 

The canyon narrowed again until it was only a meter wide. There was barely room enough for the aqueduct here, let alone any kind of path. Still, Tor didn't stop, bending and twisting when necessary to avoid snagging her pack on exposed outcrops, while Luke trailed along behind her. 

This must have been a service road back when the city was inhabited, he thought. But perhaps they had been forced to abandon this place when the water had dried up? Not a drop of moisture remained in the aqueduct now. 

As they kept walking, he was too busy with the bizarre but pleasant sensations floating through his consciousness to speculate further. Instead of dry dust, he squelched through cool mud, a faint metallic taste in his mouth that no amount of water from his personal 'vaporator erased. Three moons and infinite stars circled above him, their soft but insistent tug shifting as they passed through their orbits, and the magnetic field shimmered above him, shielding him from cosmic rays and other radiation from the depths of space. 

The distinctive glare of light on water snagged his attention. He chalked it up to just another vision, or perhaps a desert mirage. Open water on Tatooine didn't exist. 

Tor whooped in triumph and rushed forward with a cackle. He thought she must have gone moisture-mad until her boots hit a puddle with a splash--

He blinked, his eyes re-focusing as the illusion stubbornly persisted. Water--honest-to-goodness _water_ \-- trickled out of the slick redrock wall that rose above them. The aqueduct pipe they'd been followed broke off a few meters above the surface--

And flanking the pool on either side were the trees. 

By uneti standards, they were tiny--mere striplings compared to the millennia-old Great Tree, rising a thousand meters out of the Dagobah swamp. Though their stature paled before the ancient forests of Endor and Kashyyyk, they were unmatched by anything on Tatooine: ten meters tall, their feathery foliage shockingly green and lush against the barren stone. Fifteen trunks, each one twenty centimeters in diameter, surged up out of the sand, their roots entwined together over the fallen boulders, while knobbly knees extended out of the surface of the water like dianoga eyestalks. The water was so clear and still that every root was visible beath the surface, and the polished red sandstone gleamed like jewels.

A single shaft of sunlight filtered down through the canyon above them, striking the water and suffusing the entire scene in a rosy glow. Everything else--even the trees--were in shadow. From the slight curves and bends of their branches--and the vigorous health of their needle-like leaves--there was enough light over the course of the day to sustain them without dessication. Even the air was still and measured here, like a museum or an ancient tomb.

Luke stepped forward, not trusting his senses. As the trees registered his presence, the whispers in his mind crescendoed into a roar as their meaning flared into comprehension at last. 

The Great Tree of Dagobah was strong but reserved, a careful, measured presence grown wise over thousands of years of solitude and reflection. The two saplings in the courtyard of the Great Temple on Yavin Four were eager and curious, but mute in comparison, and the cuttings in the nursery were the barest wisps of consciousness, devoid of anything as concrete as a personality. 

These trees were different. Though far from human, the collective energy of the grove reminded him oddly of Jacen and Jaina: separate yet united; young, yet mature beyond their years; and possessed of enough raw, unchanneled strength to bowl him over if he wasn't prepared. 

He certainly wasn't prepared now. He hadn't bothered to shield his presence and he gleamed like a beacon in the Force, a sun in miniature, and so did the trees. They reached out to him, drawing him into the current of their thoughts, his brightness added to theirs. 

_Friends_ , pulsed the trees in his mind, half-wish, half-certainty. _Friends, friends, friends_. They had no eyes; they couldn't physically sense him as anything more than a shadowy blur--but they didn't need to. They had the Force, luminous and clear, radiating out from rock and tree and stone and human in different proportions, and they swarmed him with joyful openness that swept away all barriers of language and biology. _Suns, moons, stars, and new friends. Welcome!_

"Skywalker," Tor said in his ear. She gripped his arm so hard it ached, and he opened his mouth to tell her to stop before he realized her support was the only thing keeping him upright. 

"I'm fine," he whispered. Words were thick and distant after the immediacy of images and feelings. "I just--they're _loud_ , that's all. And eager. They're happy to see us." 

Tor was not the sort of person to say, 'I told you so,' for which Luke was grateful. She only nodded, vibrating with deep satisfaction. "I'm happy to see them, too."

_Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! Drink water, feel the suns when they come. Taste rock and stone in the depths, slowly crumbling beneath us. Reach up! Dig down! We are--friends--_

He took a deep breath, focused on his limbs long enough to follow Tor over to the trees and set down their packs. She took her field kit out, and set it aside for a moment as she placed her hand carefully against the nearest trunk and hummed. The tune was the barest thread of melody, but he knew what she wanted: permission from the trees to collect. 

"How do you know you have permission?" he'd asked her once in the early days on Yavin. "You can't _hear_ them. And most plants don't actually talk, even to me." 

Tor had only smiled. "The plants tell me what they need. If I sit long enough with an open heart, I'll hear it." 

"But how do you _know_?" he persisted. 

"I don't think about it so hard," she said at last. "I just listen, without my expectations getting in the way. Plants are very generous. They want to help. Fruit and seeds and nuts are meant to be taken, shared, spread across the landscape; they don't mind that most of the time. Even leaves and cuttings... they like the idea of a part of themselves living on, even if it's separate. And even if they didn't, losing pieces of themselves is a language they understand, part of the price they pay for being alive and passive. They know this. They are eternal optimists, to keep pouring forth so much after a loss, without holding back." 

For someone who had never had a tree's voice in her mind, Tor's view of their character was remarkably accurate, Luke thought as he watched her now. The uneti grove pulsed and sang in response to Tor's music, their answer to her question a buzzy vibrating chorus beyond her hearing. _We want to live. We want to grow. We want to grow--here, and far away, connected yet apart, self-made-other, other-made-self, grow, grow, grow, grow--_

"Yes," he said aloud. "They assent." 

Even before he spoke, she was already reaching for her field kit. Somehow, attuned on some level beyond his comprehension, she knew without him having to translate. She drew out her shears and a set of clear thermoplastic bags, and set to work. 

Her tune shifted to a familiar strain--a pruning song meant to honor cuttings, new growth, and new directions. The snap of the shears when they bit into wood was barely audible, but the impact rippled through his mind like a stone striking water before it faded away. It didn't hurt like losing a limb - more like clipping fingernails, he thought. It was a snap, a tickle in the dark, as hormones shifted and dormant buds awoke, seeking a new direction. It was a shift in direction, a temporary setback, not an end. 

She wrapped the clippings in moist paper, several twigs from each tree, each bag carefully labeled with looping ideographs. As she finished each collection, she sealed the thermoplastic edges to hold in the precious moisture, effectively locking them in stasis until their return to the _Destiny_. 

He perched above the pool, half-sprawled against a tree-trunk, and watched her work, shifting in and out of focus from his own sensations to those of the trees. He was permeable to them, porous, in a way that was both exhilirating and frightening, but he felt no inclination to shore up his boundaries, no hint of malice that would merit concern. In some ways, the lives of the uneti trees were far easier than his human one. It was a relief to escape himself for a while and linger in their own private universe of steady, easy tranquility punctuated by small dramas and triumphs. 

He couldn't believe there was so much water here. _Open_ water, no less--a good six meters across, and at least twice that to the bottom. He'd never seen anything like it before. Growing up, it would have been a miracle. As it was, it was still a miracle. This place ought to be alkaline, poisoned by salt and mine tailings. And yet the trees were living proof that it could support life. 

He roused himself long enough to shake off his protective gear and trail his bare fingers through the water. He bent and drank, scooping the water up with his bare hands to splash his face with it. It was good, fresh, clean, pure water, with that vaguely metallic aftertaste he'd sensed from the trees--bubbling straight out of the earth from some ancient lake buried for milennia, now shielded from the scorching suns. Lost for so long after the inhabitants of that mysterious city had vanished--only to be found again--first by Ben, and now by Tor and himself. 

He sat up sharply as the implications sunk in at last. _Ben. Ben was here after all. Tor was right. I thought she was crazy, but she was_ right _, he's the only one who could have done this--_

Even as the thought flickered across his mind, the trees picked up on his memory of the calm and unflappable presence of Obi-wan Kenobi.

_Yes! The Wanderer, the Lonely One, he brought us here, asleep in our seed-dreams, carried us across the stars from our never-met progenitor, awakened us from dormancy and placed us here. First he towered over us; then we over him. He sang to us, spoke to us, loved us, our friend, though he rambled on unpredictable orbits so unlike the celestial bodies above. Then he went away and we have not found him among the stars, and it has been so quiet until you came._

"Quiet, huh?" Luke said aloud in amusement. 'Quiet' was not right word in Basic for such effusive beings, but he didn't press the point. "I can only imagine. But I'm here now... and it's so good to see you--" 

Strange to have such the trees so sensitive to his thoughts. Even compared to the other uneti trees he'd encountered, they had no sense of boundaries. 

The trees swarmed him, eager and curious for stories. They wanted to know everything, and he told them what he knew as best he could. He showed them endless swathes of desert landscapes they'd never seen, the glare of twin suns on the barren expanses of the Great Chott, the lush humidity of Yavin jungle, the stately pleasure gardens of Sawarra. It was no good trying to explain civil wars or battles to them; they had no interest in such petty animal concerns, and Luke didn't even bother trying. Instead, he showed them the vast spiral arc of the galaxy seen from deep space, the glaring nightlife of Coruscant, the metal trees of Myrkr, all of which drew whispers of awe and approval. They were fascinated by his memories of Endor's forest, of the Ewoks swinging from trunk to trunk and building entire villages in the canopy, tittering incessantly among themselves at the concept. 

_Kin,_ said the trees, referring to forests of his memories. _Like, and yet unlike. But we are unique. There is nothing in this world that is like us._ Their tone was pleased and yet mournful at the same time, as if they were proud of their status and yet also saddened by it. 

"That's not true," Luke said aloud, more for his own benefit than theirs. "Maybe here on Tatooine, yes, but there's so much more to the galaxy than this place. I mean, yes, there used to be more of you, but you're not the first of your kind I've met, even if you are the loudest--"

He sent them an image of the Great Tree on Dagobah as he had seen it eight year earlier, the day after Yoda died: the massive branches laden with cones, phosphorescent beetles blinking in the mist; then another of the two Yavin seedlings. "See?" 

The effect on the trees was immediate and sudden. They swarmed over Luke's mind with a joyful cry, reaching out to the Great Tree in his memory--

Something _sparked_ , as if a circuit had connected. In the space between heartbeats, two distant points in space--the uneti grove and the island of the Great Tree--linked, sweeping Luke along in its wake, even as he bridged the gap between them. 

_No, wait, stop, I don't--_ he started to say, or would have, except there was no time.

_Size matters not_ , Yoda had said, raising an X-wing out of the swamp while his slack-jawed apprentice stood by and stared in wonder. It had taken years for Luke to realize size was a quality of matter that was fundamentally irrelevant when it came to the Force. The first step to doing the impossible was to believe that he could--and once he'd accepted that matter was real and yet also an illusion, it wasn't so hard to believe there was no difference between a starfighter and a pebble, a person or a planet. The trick was to let go of everything he thought was true and embrace an entirely different way of looking at the universe, despite what his senses told him. 

Time and space were the same way. Everything in the galaxy was inextricably bound together through the Force, though his mind frequently blinded him to it. _Know that what you do here, connected to everything else it is,_ Yoda had said to him once. _This world, this sky; the myriad worlds, the myriad skies; the entire galaxy, and everything in the universe, known and unknown. Notice this, you may not. Doubt this, you might. Still, true it is, whether you believe it or not._

The uneti, blessed with entirely different modes of perception, had fewer limitations. They crossed the light-years between Tatooine and Dagobah as if it were as simple as opening and closing the stomata of their leaves. Rooted to the ground, their physical bodies didn't so much as twitch--but ground and gravity had no such compulsion over their consciousness. 

_You leave and yet a part of you is here always,_ the Great Tree on Dagobah had said at their parting, days before Luke had confronted Vader on Endor. _I am here, I am rooted, yet I am with you, across the galaxy under the light of other suns._ At the time, he'd assumed that to be nothing more than a beautiful, poetic metaphor. 

Luke had been wrong about that, too. 

He knew he was slumped against the uneti trunk on the edge of the pool, slack-jawed and staring--but he was also suspended among the stars, balanced in the spectral crown of the Great Tree even as it remained firmly planted in the earth. The calm, measured voice of the Great Tree was drowned in the sea of joyful cries from the Tatooine grove, yet Luke could feel the lone elder's astonishment and delight through every branch and twig. _How--?_

_We are not alone!_ chorused the grove. Their laughter was an endless cascade of water on redrock stone smoothing out all rough edges, the bite of dessicated desert air, the sublime taste of moonlight. 

_We are not alone,_ agreed the Great Tree in wonder, veiled in mist yet aware of every quiver and flicker of starlight beyond. _This one would have called to you had your presence been known--_

_Friends!_ Two familiar voices joined in--Luke recognized the pair of unetis from the courtyard of the Great Temple on Yavin IV. He hadn't realized they could stretch so _far_ across the galaxy, to speak with their progenitor and kin on a distant worlds--yet there they were in that star-space, their awareness mingling with his. It was raining on Yavin, and their roots were drenched; their branches swayed back and forth in the winds with pride. _We are not alone! We are not alone!_ they cried in welcome, joining the dance. 

The only discordant note was Luke himself. Even as he witnessed the joyous reunion and delighted in it, he couldn't stifle his jealousy at the ease of their connections between the far-flung trees. Selfish as it was, the nagging fear that he might never know such intimate companionship in his own life ate at him. 

Hypersensitive as they were to every fluctuation in their network, the trees knew instantly of his distress. 

_You are alone?_ Puzzlement reigned; such isolation was now a foreign concept to all but the Great Tree--the only presence in the crowd of excited minds that remembered Luke wasn't one of them. 

_I am_. He couldn't remember how to speak aloud. He wasn't sure he even had a mouth anymore; he'd lost track of his body. His spirit was strung across the bright strands of energy linking Dagobah to Yavin to Tatooine and back again, and he had no attention to spare for anything physical. 

_My partner--my other-self--gone_. He visualized Callista as he had last seen her, striding away from him in the bloody light of the eclipse. _My--friend--my other-self--gone, too_. He stumbled over the word, not knowing what else to call Mara, yet the words were bare and limited in comparison to the connection itself. Instead of that final glimpse of her retreating figure as he choked on his own blood on the dojo floor, he pictured the vivid, pounding pulse of her dance at Talent Night, her shining dress red-golden as her hair. 

The Yavin trees cooed in recognition at the familiar light, while the Tatooine grove muttered in astonishment among the themselves at the conjunctions. Neither group understood his point. 

_Not alone_ , the Great Tree chided gently. _You know better. 'Distant' and 'absent' are not the same. Let us show you._

Bound as Luke was to such powerful, pulsing presences, he had no doubt they could reach out across the galaxy to Callista, call her back home. The cruel irony was there was no way she could hear them, barred as she was from the Force 

But Mara could. 

Luke didn't understand how such communication worked, only that it did. He'd done it for the first time, all unknowingly, at Cloud City after that disastrous fight with Vader, summoning Leia to his rescue. Then Vader's own voice had reached across the system into Luke's mind as they fled in the _Falcon_ a few minutes later, and Luke had answered back, acknowledging his father for the first time. 

Since then, Luke had spoken at a distance many times, reaching out to check on Leia, or the twins, or any one of his students, no matter where they were in the galaxy. Sometimes they reached out to _him_ , too. Yet it was a mystery how he unerringly found the one he sought each time, out of the billions of sentient beings in the galaxy, without anything more than a feeling. He didn't know where they were, but the Force did, and he could trust that. 

As the Emperor's Hand, Mara Jade had prized her ability to heed Palpatine's call anywhere, at any time. Luke didn't have quite the same rapport with her, but he'd touched her mind on numerous occasions during their time at the Academy, even before that last, disastrous meeting--

The trees didn't give him any warning. They found the one bright spot in the galaxy that was Mara Jade and dragged him along for the ride, rocketing across the galaxy in an instant to where she was. Stars spun around him, as he plunged down into atmosphere, right through the bubble of the Rodian domed city to her. 

Strolling in the public market of Iskaayuma with her two Knights errant at her side, Mara had time for one stunned exclamation of _Skywalker?_ before she staggered forward and collapsed. Her limbs twitched as she gasped for breath, clutching at her head.

Kyp and Cilghal recovered from shock with admirable aplomb. Cilghal dropped to the ground beside her master, webbed fingers feeling for a pulse; Kyp scanned the marketplace for threats, one hand on his lightsaber. Even as her students closed ranks around her, Mara's mind recovered from the shock, popping into the trees' network with a jerk. _Skywalker, what the HELL d'you think you're DOING--?!_

He'd done everything wrong in that last meeting in the dojo. There, the connection had been one-sided--he knew her, but she didn't know him at all. He did now what he should have done from the beginning--tore down every mental boundary he had, laying bare his consciousness to her, placing every memory and sensation at her disposal, as she had been at his on that awful day. 

What happened next shocked him as much as it did her. 

Stars. Sweet bloody stars. All the emotions he hadn't let himself feel since that confrontation in the dojo, spilling out into the ether. Endless rounds of rage and self-loathing that spiraled downward into depression and despair before starting anew. All of them spurred by the very real fear he would never see her again, never have a chance to apologize, never have a chance to tell her--

He loved her. He'd loved her for years now, aware that his dreams were impossible, yet unable to let them go. He'd accepted her companionship for what it was, tried to believe it was enough and move on. He'd succeeded so thoroughly he'd come to believe it--so thoroughly he hadn't even noticed her own feelings for him, though they'd right under his nose this entire time. 

_I love Callista, but I never would have fallen for her if I'd known how you felt about me, Mara--_

She didn't believe him. Still fighting against the tide of his emotions, Mara struggled to restore her shields and push him away. But she was no match for the combined strength of the uneti trees, most of whom didn't understand why anyone would _want_ to be separate and alone, and kept pulling her back. 

If she slipped away, she would never give Luke another chance to explain himself. 

So he showed her the world through his eyes, starting with their first meeting in Karrde's illicit base on Myrkr: his admiration for her competence and dogged persistence, even if she was fixated on killing him for crimes both real and imagined. The subsequent trek through the jungle as reluctant allies only deepened his desire to understand her better, as they played a grim game of survival against wild vornskrs and Imperial patrols. She saw his heartfelt relief when she'd interrupted his disastrous training with the insane Joruus C'baoth on Jomark, and when she'd defended him in their battle with him in the Emperor's storehouse on Wayland. She felt the growing sense of _rightness_ that had filled him when she accepted Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber as her own, and when she agreed to come to Yavin and teach at the Academy by his side. Nor could she deny his growing attraction, deepened by their interactions across the years, and his own confusion and fear that he'd destroy the precarious balance of their friendship if he dared to ask for more. 

_'You two make a pretty good team,' Tor said to me once. And we do. We really do, Mara. We balance each other, and our differences only make us stronger. I don't care that your training was unorthodox, or that you served the Empire once; you've grown beyond those limitations, and the challenges have only made you a better fighter, a better teacher, a better Jedi in the end._

_The only reason I've been able to do so much with the Academy is because you were there by my side to back me up and cover for my mistakes. When you left, I realized that I don't want to teach without you. I don't want to do ANYTHING without you. I'll walk away from Yavin, from the New Republic, from everything, if only I can be with you._

_It's not too late, Mara. I know I screwed up, I made such a mess of things, I hurt you, and I lashed out at you unfairly in the end--I gave into my anger and lashed out rather than listen to what you told me. We should have had this conversation years ago, before Callista ever came into my life--and for that you have my deepest apologies. Maybe I've ruined everything, but it doesn't have to be this way. Not if you still feel for me what I do for you now._

_I love you, Mara, I love you, I love you, I love you--_

For a heart-stopping moment, he thought she was going to push him away and flee. Instead, she leapt for him, a streaming red-gold flash clamping onto him like a rocksnail, dropping every last vestige of boundary so there was no separation, no space where one of them stopped and the other began. _Skywalker, you impossible, insufferable IDIOT,_ she cried, but her tone was one of such fierce affection there was no mistaking the truth. _I love you, too--_

He didn't care what she called him. He would take every insult and more if it came from her, even if he hadn't earned them several times over. The thrill of her declaration was eclipsed when she yanked him closer, melding their minds together as they became one.

In one strain of reality, Mara was collapsed in the dusty Rodian street, her students clustered around her. In another, far more interesting version, she was kissing him, though neither of them possessed anything like a body in that crackling space between stars. He kissed her back, drinking deep as he crushed her to his chest (his actual body was light-years away from hers, but such details hardly mattered now that they were together, now that they were _one_ \--) 

("She's not breathing!" Cilghal called out urgently on the edges of Luke's awareness, as Kyp directed crowds of curious sight-seers away from the scene with hand signals and none-too-subtle Force nudges. "She's not _here_ anymore--I'm going to have to shock her!" 

Kyp hissed between his teeth. "What are you waiting for? Do it!" 

A burst of Force lightning arced from Cilghal's left hand to Mara's chest. Her head would have slammed against the ground if Cilghal's free hand hadn't been there to hold her steady--) 

At the same moment, a rushing wind slammed Mara away from Luke, forcibly separating them. With a cry, he reached out to her, but she was already fading. 

_I have to go,_ Mara said, turning to meet his eyes. She was right, and they both knew it, but it didn't make it easier--not when they were together at last. She gave a short bark of laughter at his hesitation. _Don't worry, farmboy, we'll meet again. Unless this is just some near-death wishful thinking and you weren't serious just now--_

_Name the place and time, and I'll remove all doubts,_ Luke said, a thrill running through him at her teasing. 

Her lips curved back in a smile. She was translucent now, a faint wisp of consciousness barely registering to his senses. _Yavin. At the end of my students' errantry. I'll be there..._

And then she was gone. As a dust-covered Mara gasped and sputtered for breath in Cilghal's arms on Rodia. Luke sagged back in relief that she was safe, even as he mourned her absence. 

_See?_ The Great Tree was with him again--or, more likely, Luke had been too distracted to notice it had been present all along. _Distance doesn't matter. Not for us, and not for you either._

_Not alone! Not alone!_ the other trees chanted, as if to emphasize the point. 

_I think I need to go back now,_ Luke said, suddenly weary. If Mara's reaction was anything to go by, he was in for a world of trouble when he returned to his body _I can't throw myself around like this without consequences._

_No, of course not,_ agreed the Great Tree. _You are so limited, despite your freedom in other arenas. But the way exists, if you care to take it. And we are here for you, whenever you remember to call us._

Luke nodded. He tugged at the faint traces linking him to his own body, pulling himself back down into--

Blackness. 

***

"Skywalker! Don't you _dare_ die on me, Skywalker!" 

It was Tor's voice, but something was wrong: there was a note of fear that he'd never heard before, that had no place intruding on her breezy self-assurance. The stinging slaps on his face and chest were far away, as if they belonged to someone else in a distant dream. He tried to open his eyes and couldn't; nor could he shake the oppressive weight holding down his lungs. Something was wrong, very wrong, to upset Tor like this. 

Oh. He'd stopped breathing, all right. That would do it. 

It wasn't hard to use the Force to give a little nudge in the right spot to get things moving again. The problem was finding enough energy to _care_. He'd done this trick once before on the _Huntbird_ with Cray and Nichos, when the _Eye of Palpatine_ had shot out the ship's life-support systems--

" _Skywalker_!" Tor screamed, as if she were the one dying, not Luke. 

But it was sufficient incentive for him to act. He dug in to the Force as if it were thick mud, clogging up his lungs, pushing outward with all his strength-- 

He was rewarded for his efforts by a violent cough, as he choked on the water that was suddenly in his throat. He lurched upright long enough to vomit it out before collapsing again in a heap on the ground. A red haze marked a problem with his vision--no, it was redrock stone--

"Oh, merciful Gy-ri, you're alive," Tor sighed, as she helped him sit up against the trunk of the nearest uneti trees. She was soaked to skin, and so was he, he realized in surprise. The uneti trees whispered quietly around him, soft sensations of water-and-stone that were mercifully easy to tune out with so many more important matters to focus on.  
.  
"Tor--" His voice cracked, weak and faint, a shadow of its former self. He tried again, with marginally better results. "Tor, what _happened?_ " 

"You tell me," Tor said. A halo of light-colored flesh was blossoming around her left eye, marking the formation of what looked to be a prodigious bruise. Long, thin scratches across her face were still bleeding. "I heard a splash, and saw you'd gone under. I thought it was on purpose, but when you didn't come up after a minute, I went in after you." 

"I fell in?" Luke repeated. He must have been so engrossed in his conversation with the trees he hadn't even noticed. 

Tor nodded. "You grabbed me and you held me down, and wouldn't let me go. Just when I thought I was going to have to break your arm or drown along with you, you went limp, and I was able to pull us both to the surface."

Oh. The wounds on her face made more sense now. "I'm sorry. I--wasn't present for any of that." 

"I noticed," Tor said dryly. "What happened?" 

He was too fixated on the irony to answer. "I can't believe I almost drowned. On _Tatooine_ of all places." 

"We've already established the universe has a sense of humor. If you weren't _here_ , then where were you?" 

He gestured up towards the leafy canopy above them. "Did you know the uneti trees on different planets can talk to each other? Now that I've introduced them to each other, anyway." 

Tor shook herself. "Hold on, let me get my notes. I have a feeling I'm going to want a record of this." She squelched over to her scattered field gear and retrieved her journal, scribbling furiously as Luke explained his bizarre journey as best he could. 

He skimmed over the details of his union with Mara, noting only that they'd resolved their differences and she had promised to return to Yavin at the end of the practice period. The rest was too private and new right now for him to share with anyone else now, even Tor. 

"That's one _hell_ of a story, Skywalker. Even for you," Tor whistled when he finished. She reached over to the nearest uneti and patted its trunk affectionately. "I ought to have known they'd be troublemakers!" 

He thought about translating this sentiment to the trees, but decided not to bother. If it weren't for their interference, he'd never have reached a resolution with Mara. He owed them for that. 

"You saved my life. I'd probably be dead if it weren't for you," he said instead. He wouldn't have been here at all if not for her, but that was beside the point. He owed Tor a great deal, too. 

"There's still plenty of time to return the favor," Tor said, waving to their surroundings. "We're not out of here yet."

Luke sat up, this time more slowly. The world spun for a moment, then held steady. He'd been through worse on the _Eye of Palpatine_ and survived. How much harder could this be? No one was shooting at them. "We'll be fine," he said firmly, hoping that was true. 

She shook her head, wringing the remaining moisture she could out of her braids. Even in the shadows cast by the canyon wall, their clothes were drying rapidly, erasing the evidence of their misadventures. "Try to stay out of trouble while I finish collecting, all right? I can't handle any more near-death experiences today." 

He nodded as she returned to her work, and lay back against the trunk of the nearest uneti, staring up at the sky through the feathery green haze of the canopy. The trees' soft apologies complimented the early stages of a Jedi healing trance, a process they found both fascinating and novel. 

The one good thing about nearly drowning was that it left few marks on his body. By the time Tor stamped back to his resting place and tossed something black and metallic in his lap, he was out of the trance and alert enough to catch it out of the air with a gentle Force push. Dodecahedral in shape, it hummed quietly in recognition as he settled it in his left palm. 

He knew it was a holocron even before a tiny hologram of a young man wrapped in Jedi robes appeared in the air before him. 

"Luke. I hoped you would come here someday. I hoped you would find this." The face was different from the grizzled old desert hermit Luke had known, but the voice had the same clear, measured accent, unmistakeable after all these years. "I do not know what the future will bring, but I fear the worst. These fragments I have shored against my ruin--that and the trees. I leave this here for you, hoping that you will survive where I cannot, that the Force will lead you here someday--" 

The device shuddered to a halt. He knew from experience that meant a short circuit somewhere, something he'd have to repair before the holocron was fully usuable. It was finicky, delicate work, but he'd done it often enough to where it had become second nature. He wasn't the only one: Cray had been exceptionally good at it, and Dorsk 81, of all people, had also picked up the knack. 

"Where did you get this?" Luke said, looking up to where Tor stood watching. 

She pointed over to the far corner of the grove. "Tucked away under a cluster of roots. I thought it looked like a Jedi thing." 

_It tickled_ , piped one of the trees. _We could not eat it, nor did it decay. A rock incapable of weathering is a poor neighbor. Good riddance._

He had to laugh at that. Tor raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, waiting patiently for him to collect himself. 

"He did leave me something after all," Luke said when he could breathe again, still giddy with surprise and delight at the day's doings. "This holocron--the trees--Ben left them here for me. He knew I'd return someday."

"And he left his secrets tucked safely away from prying eyes in case he was wrong, and you didn't return after all. Waiting for the Jedi--for whoever survived--to sense the trees through the Force when they matured enough, and find this place." 

"You _knew_." 

"I _suspected_ ," she corrected archly. "Like I said, Skywalker, I was an exile for a long time. I imagined--what I would have done in his place." She looked around and shook her head in wonder. "Apparently, I did a better job than I knew." 

Luke laughed again, cradling the holocron to his chest. "Oh, Ben. Oh, Ben." One final gift from the man who had turned Luke's world upside down--a voice from his past that he'd thought gone forever. How like him to leave one final surprise like this. 

"Did you get what you came here for?" he said at last. 

She nodded. "Did you?" 

He thought over the question carefully as he swaddled the holocron in a cloth and tucked it away in his pack. "Whatever I expected, this wasn't it. But I'm glad we came. I'm glad you were right, and I was wrong. I'm glad we found this place, the trees, the holocron-- _everything_." 

_And we you,_ chorused the uneti trees, unable to resist chiming in. _We are so happy to have more friends. To have kin. To be more than just us. We will be here, and yet also with you, now that we have found you. We are one._

Luke pursed his lips, touched yet unsure of how to respond. The prospect of conducting his life in that hyper-focused state that was was second nature to the trees was exhausting--even without the risk of severe bodily trauma if he went too far, too fast. He was going to have to be more careful with shielding in the future--

Well, he'd figure it out. Right now, it was enough to be back in his own skin, more or less in one piece. He and Tor had found what they'd come for. And Mara had forgiven him. _Loved_ him, even. That single pinprick of light that marked her consciousness burned brightly on the edge of his awareness, forging an indelible link between them. Even if he never connected to the uneti's network again, it had been worth every risk for that outcome alone. 

Yet there was also an odd flicker of distant danger in the back of his mind--too far away to be of immediate concern, but enough to make him reluctant to prolong their visit. "It's time to go," Luke said aloud. 

"Are you sure you don't want to rest some more?" Tor asked. "You've been through so much today--" 

"I'm fine," Luke insisted, though he took her proffered hand and let her help him to his feet. The healing trance had done wonders, but he was tired and and sore, and the leg he'd injured on the _Eye of Palpatine_ had started to ache again at the worst possible time. He wasn't damned if he'd admit it, though. "We'll go slowly. I'll rest when we get back to the ship. "

She raised an eyebrow, but packed up her gear without further comment. He couldn't resist another sip from the pool, splashing more water over his face and hands, before he tugged on his boots and protective gear, shaking his head in wonder as he surveyed their surroundings. Water in the desert. A secret grove of long-lost Force trees the same age as he was. A holocron from Ben, with secret messages for him if only he could fix the machine. He wouldn't have believed any of this if he hadn't witnessed it for himself. 

He might physically leave this place, but it would always be here for him. His connection with the uneti trees would see to that. For them, there was truly no such thing as distance, no true good-bye for those able to reach them. Though the memories of his experiences might fade over time, he was rooted and bound here as the trees were--from a certain point of view. 

No doubt, Ben had taken comfort in that same connection during his long years of exile. 

His last glimpse before they departed was of light on water and that pervasive feathery green of the uneti needles. Then they turned the corner and everything was swallowed up by dry dust and redrock. But the soft whisper of the trees lingered at the edges of his mind for a long time afterwards. 

***

The Sand People were waiting at the entrance to the ancient city. 

Luke was so preoccupied with putting one foot in front of the other, he didn't notice until they stepped out of the shadows, blocking the narrow passageway out. There were fifteen of them silhouetted against the redrock in their their shapeless, dust-colored robes and bandaged masks. All of them were armed to the teeth with gaderiffi sticks and slugthrowers, with a few souped-up blasters thrown in for good measure. 

Tor froze stock-still beside him. It was just as well--his left arm around her shoulder was the only thing keeping him upright at the moment. "Think I should show them my permits?" she muttered into the silence. 

How like her to jest at such a serious moment. He couldn't help a smile--no doubt what she'd intended--even as his heart raced, and he slowed his breath to calm it. Even had he been prepared for this encounter, an open fight was not on the agenda. Even if the Sand People were the aggressors, it wasn't the Jedi way. 

Fortunately, there were plenty of options. As the old Jedi proverb went, ' _There are a thousand ways to use the Force in a fight--and a thousand and one ways to avoid it._ '

This many minds, all grimly focused on him would be fiendishly difficult to sway. Nor was he in the mood to brute force matters by yanking their weapons out of their hands. He wished he'd practiced more with illusions; he didn't a knack for it the way Corran did. 

But Callista had taught him another way. 

"Whatever happens, don't let go," Luke said to Tor, even as his right hand slipping down to his belt for his lightsaber. 

With a snap-hiss, the green blade ignited in his hand as he brought it up to a defensive one-handed position to shield them both from any trigger-happy Tuskens eager to get a shot off. Not his favorite stance, but under the circumstances, it would have to do. 

He took a deep breath, and reached out to the million of sand grains at his feet. He and Tor would be the eye of a massive dust storm, one that would scatter their adversaries without a firefight, and blind them to their presence--

But even as he tightened his grip on the sand, the Sand People were shouting and gesticulating in confusion--at his _lightsaber_? 

"Skywalker," Tor said in his ear. "What's _happening?_ Your saber--" 

"I don't know," he breathed, letting the dust storm subside for now. He couldn't understand what was happening. Why hadn't the Sand People ambushed them already? Were they looking for someone? Was the sight of his lightsaber alone enough to deter them? Did they even know what it was? 

He reached out with the Force, and brushed an inquiring tendril across their minds. The Sand People's agitation roiled with-- _recognition_ , of all things. Luke fell back with a shudder, even as his mind reeled from the implications. 

"What is it?" Tor asked. 

"They--know me," Luke said slowly, He couldn't understand their language, yet the emotions and images behind the words were unmistakeable. "From the _Eye of Palpatine_. At least one of them was on the ship, and passed on the stories about me and my Green Fire Sword to the others. I'm--a ghost to them. A figure out of myth. A legend." 

It was amazing, really, how small acts of kindness came back to you. On the _Eye of Palpatine_ , he'd rescued a trapped Jawa, only for the little hooded alien to lead him directly to the computer where Callista's spirit dwelled, a meeting that had transformed Luke's entire life. A few days later, Luke and Callista had gone to considerable trouble to rescue the group of Tuskens also trapped on the ship, even after they'd nearly killed him him. He'd never, ever expected to get any reward for it, let alone in such bizarre circumstances--

With one final shout from their leader, the Sand People fell silent. As if on cue, they lowered their weapons and stepped aside from the way out, lining the walls on either side. 

For a long moment, Luke stared at the tableau before them, wondering if it was a trap. Then he shut off the lightsaber and stepped forward, forcing Tor to move with him or drop her arm. She shook herself in surprise and confusion, but kept pace with him as they made their way forward towards the opening. 

Their progress was agonizing and slow, made worse by the fifteen pairs of eyes scrutinizing their every move. Every second, he expected them to raise their blasters and shoot the two intruders. Yet there was not so much a ripple of warning in the Force from their direction, and their minds reflected no treachery, only still, quiet wonder. 

Callista, he thought, would have appreciated the absurdity. After all, she'd been the one who insisted the universe had a sense of humor. She'd been right there with him piping sugar water and rotgut alcohol into the section of the ship the Tuskens had barricaded for their own; waiting patiently until they had could be subdued and loaded onto the escape pods. 

Maybe someday he'd have a chance to tell her about it.

As he and Tor threaded their way through the narrow opening out of the city, a ululating cry arose from the gathered crowd, a piercing wail taken up by many voices. The sound nearly drove Luke out of his skin before he realized no attack was forthcoming, and calmed himself. 

"What do you think they're saying?" Tor said quietly. 

"I don't know," Luke said. He was still stunned by what he'd found in their minds, how strange it was that they hadn't even tried to kill him. It was a refreshing chance of pace from his previous encounters, but he didn't want to push their luck. "If it's all the same to you, I think we should keep moving." 

"I'm with you on this one." 

***

Luke didn't remember much of the walk back, only that it stretched on for hours, the distance dragged out by his exhaustion and aching leg. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other, over and over again. With Tor supporting him, he slipped in and out of healing trances, rousing at the slightest sense of life or danger. How she managed without the Force, he didn't know. 

He couldn't see either sun from the canyon floor, but the light gradually dimmed and weakened, enveloping them in darker and darker shadows. He quickened his pace when he could, alarmed by the thought of another night in the Waste. The Sand People had given them a reprieve, but they could all too easily change their minds; and krayt dragons were not friendly, despite Tor's illusions to the contrary,. 

He drank from his portable 'vaporator when he was thirsty, grateful that he could hydrate without breaking stride. Life narrowed to its barest elements: shadow, dust, rock, and forward motion. Everything else was superfluous. Twilight fell, and they kept going. Even Tor was flagging now, but Luke was afraid to stop until they reached the relative safety of the Dune Sea, so they pressed on in silence. 

When they finally stumbled into the open an hour after second sunset, he was unprepared for the moonlight pouring across the vast sweep of sky, washing heaven and earth like a splash of blue milk. The familiar constellations of his childhood were hidden from view, but at least they'd not need any glowlamps. 

"There she is," Tor said, pointing to the cliffs in the distance where they'd left the _Destiny_. "Just a little bit further now--" 

They kicked and stumbled their way through the thick drifts towards the cliffs. Luke judged they were roughly three-quarters of the way across when the ground underneath them shuddered violently, sending them both sprawling.

"What's this, an earthquake?" Tor said, fumbling with her staff as she hauled him to his feet. "This world is supposed to be geologically stable--" 

"Oh," Luke said, as a thrill of danger ran through him, of something huge and heavy boiling up from beneath the earth. "Oh, no." 

"What?" 

"Run!" 

Too late. Even as he spoke, the ground shifted and buckled underneath them, flinging them backwards into the dunes as a massive reptilian head rose from depths in a spray of sand to tower twenty meters over their heads. 

A canyon krayt was a force to be reckoned with: ten meters high with a five-horned crown ridge and a spike-studded tail, averaging thirty meters of length in all. A greater krayt dragon was an entirely different order of magnitude, spanning nearly three times that distance, with proportions to match. Unlike their rock-burrowing cousins, the greater krayts were few and far between, spending their lives swimming through the sand unseen by those on the surface. Luke had only seen a bleached skeletons and blurry holos before, but there was no mistaking the giant before him for anything else. 

For a moment, slitted yellow eyes watched them, more curious than alarmed, as toothy jaws the size of an X-wing worked. Then the dragon dove back into the sand with the force of a thermal detonator, showering them both with massive plumes of grit in the wake of its passing. The the ripples in the sand faded and all was quiet again. 

"That was _incredible_ ," Tor said, beaming at him. 

"Uhnnn," Luke said, coughing the sand out of his lungs in lieu of a more coherent reply. "Oh--" 

The sand shifted around him. He tensed, expecting the return of the krayt dragon at any moment, before he realized his mistake and relaxed again with a sight of relief and wonder. What he'd taken for the gleam of dragon scales was revealed on closer inspection as thousands of chunky, fuzzy-bodied insects emerging around them in the sand stirred by the dragon's wake. As they reached the surface, they unfolded their wings--the same pale green shade as newly emerging uneti leaves, broken only by the bright red eyespots at the trailing tips. 

"Sandworms," he whispered. He hadn't seen anything like this since he was sixteen, sneaking out alone into the desert one night on a dare from Fixer. "They spend years burrowing through the sand as grubs, and many more in pupation, waiting for the right cue to emerge en masse and fly for a single night. They don't feed--they don't even have mouths. They can only mate and return to lay their eggs in the sand before they die." 

He stretched out his right hand and let a moth crawl up on his gloved fingers, its feathery antennae twitching as it pumped its drying wings. 

"What eats them?" Tor asked, peering curiously at it. 

"I don't know. Maybe the krayt dragon? They're kinda small fry for such a big lizard, though." All around them, more moths were emerging from the sand and some were taking flight. The moth on Luke's hand hesitated for a moment, and then took to the air to join them. 

"I'm collecting some. For science," Tor announced. "Who knows, maybe I can raise them in the lab." She pulled off her pack and dug around until she'd found a handful of jar and set to work. 

Luke sighed and shook his head. As more and more moths took flight, the two of them were engulfed by thousands of beating wings, as the moths swooped in circles over their heads to find willing partners which clung together in flight as they mated. The display was interrupted at intervals by gravid females dropping back to earth and burrowing into the sand to lay their eggs. 

"This world is _full_ of wonders!" Tor shouted, as she hoisted a jar full of thousands of tiny luminescent eggs up in triumph. 

"You know," Luke called back, craning his neck to get a better view of the cascade of moths soaring above him, "I'm starting to agree with you." 

***

As the _Destiny_ leapt into hyperspace, Luke sat back in the pilot's chair, suffused with a welcome calm. Eight hours in a healing trance before their departure had done wonders, but he was still mentally and emotionally exhausted from all that had befallen them in the desert. On their return to Yavin, there would be no end of work to do--not to mention the painstaking job of repairing Ben's holocron. But for now, it was enough to savor the moment where one story ended and another began, and listen to Tor's voice over the ships intercom as she watered in the newest batch of uneti cuttings, singing an old Chandrilan folk song about a hard rain a-gonna fall. 

To his surprise, Luke found that he was looking forward to their return to the moisture of Yavin IV in all its infinite varieties. Maybe it was because he'd come to terms with his demons out in the desert--or maybe it was because their arrival would bring him that much closer to seeing Mara again in the flesh. Either way, this journey would made the last few weeks of the practice period bearable, and he was grateful for it. 

Sometimes changes came slowly and gradually; lately, life had been one whirlwind after another. Between one moment and the next, his entire life had been transformed, and he was still adjusting to happiness after so long in despond. _Who knows, you might look back at all this and think it was the best thing that ever happened to you,_ Tor had said back in the canyon, and she'd been right about that. Again. 

Somewhere in between the sandstorm and the uneti grove, even before he'd patched things up with Mara, he'd made his peace with Callista's absence. He missed her--if he were honest with himself, he probably always would--but the pain and guilt of his failures had ebbed, and the thought of her no longer drew him to rage or tears. He hoped she was well, wherever she was, and that she'd found whatever refuge she could even if the Force still eluded her. Someday, perhaps, their paths would cross again--but in the meantime, he'd live the best life he could without her and trust her to do the same. 

He owed Callista so much. She'd saved his life on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , taught him much in the way of Jedi lore, and terrible jokes, not to mention how to end a relationship with dignity and grace (even if he had failed to live up to her example). Would he and Mara would have ever recognized their feelings for each other if Callista hadn't disrupted everything? Or would they have let endless rounds of second-guessing and self-recriminations drag on unresolved for decades? There was no way to know now what might have been, but Luke was grateful all the same that events had transpired as they had. 

Sometimes, there was nothing you could do. And sometimes, there were things you _could_. The road to happiness was to accept the former and not hold back from the latter. Wisdom came from knowing which was which. 

That thought made him reach for the ship's comm, and signal the _Hunter's Luck_ on Rodia. He expected the familiar automated recording encouraging him to leave a message or call back later--but to his surprise, Mara stumbled into the holo frame on the second ring, eyes bleary and red-gold hair in disarray. 

"You do know it's the middle of the night here, Skywalker?" she drawled, tugging back a strand of hair from the corners of what looked to be an expensive Vonyx silk nightshirt in an especially fetching shade of lavender. 

"Err, no," he stammered, caught off guard by her casual tone and dishabille. "To be honest, I wasn't expecting you to be aboard ship right now. I thought I'd leave a message. To make sure you were all right, after we--ah, parted." 

"I see," Mara said, unable to hide her amusement. Well, at least she wasn't angry with him. "What happened to your friends?" 

"Oh, the trees? They're around. Just not... focused on me at the moment. They mean well, but they're exhausting conversationalists. It seemed... a bit much right now to use the Force to contact you after everything that happened the other day." The link they'd forged in the canyons flared up a like a beacon in his mind, but he pressed it down firmly. "I thought it would be better to try communicating the old-fashioned way for a while--in case I hurt you. Again." 

Mara's eyes narrowed slightly. "I was fine. You startled me, that's all. But that's not the only reason why you're calling me now, is it?" 

"How did you know?" 

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be an idiot, Luke," she said, and he thrilled to the sound of his given name on her lips. Like Tor's familial honorific, it was not an intimacy she used lightly. "I've seen inside your head and your heart. You think I wouldn't notice when you're holding something back? Now spill it." 

He nodded. "I--wondered if you meant what you said earlier. About your feelings for me. Even though I hurt you by taking you for granted. For blaming you for my problems. For breaking your shields. By being with Callista--" 

"Skywalker," Mara said firmly, "must you always be so kriffin' dense? I admit, I wanted to gut you like a gundark when I left Yavin, but--in light of certain events, I realized what happened was just as much my failure as yours, on so many different levels. And you don't have to apologize for Callista, either. She and I might have had our differences, but she was a woman of honor, and her taste in men was impeccable. She helped you get through on the _Eye of Palpatine_ when no one else could. It was only natural for the two of you to fall for each other.

"Who knows, I might have done the same thing in your place," she added with a wink. 

Luke blinked, then reddened as the implication sunk in. Did she mean what he thought she did? He'd never even suspected the possibility she might--

He opened his mouth to speak, but she was already doubled over with laughter at his embarrassment. "For all the rummaging you've done in my head, there's still quite a bit you don't know about me, Skywalker," she said when she was capable of speech again, a flirtatious smile playing on her lips. 

"Then I have a great deal to look forward to," he said, recovering his wits enough to match her teasing tone for tone. 

She chuckled at that, then grew serious. "And--to be honest, I'd rather take it slow. Recent revelations notwithstanding, I still don't know if I want to continue teaching. There are so many things I want to do--" 

Luke nodded. "Nothing has to happen overnight. We have our whole lives to figure this out. Just know that whatever you decide to do, I'll be right there with you--whether it's staying at the Academy, or working for Karrde, or joining the Galactic Circus Exposition as a rancor trainer."

Was it his imagination or did her lower lip tremble? "You'd abandon your dreams for me?" 

He shook his head firmly. "Dreams change. Like you said once, I won't be around forever, and the Academy's got to be able to function without me. You know I've been grooming Kam and Tionne to take over eventually--there's no reason we can't accelerate the process. Lately I've been itching myself for a fast ship and open skies myself. But whatever you decide, we'll make it work--if you want to." 

"Damn right I do, farmboy," Mara said in satisfaction. "Now shove off, so I can get some sleep."

"I love you, Mara." It was so strange and naked to say the words aloud, but he couldn't break the comm without them. 

"Oh--" Mara drew in a hasty breath, and he cursed himself for a fool for putting her on the spot. As Tor had pointed out, there were thousands of ways to express love, only a handful of which involved words. Had he presumed too much? 

"I never thought I'd say this, but I love you, Luke," she said at last, banishing all his fears into oblivion. "I'm glad you called to check on me. And I'll see you when we've finished errantry two months from now. You're going to be so surprised to see Kyp, he's been functionally mature and operating with all cylinders firing for _weeks_ ; neither Cilghal or I can believe it--" 

"I can't wait to hear all about it," he said, before she broke the connection. 

He sat in the cockpit, and stared out at the streaming starlines through the viewports, unable to hold back his grin at her parting words and the promises contained within them. Then he got up and went to the conservatory, where Tor was tending her plantings. 

" _'And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?_ '" Tor sang by way of greeting, waving her watering wand in time to the music as he entered the room. "' _And what'll you do now, my darling young one?_ '" 

" _'I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin','_ " he joined in by way of answer. "' _I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest... And I'll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it. And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it--'_ "

"' _And it's a hard--_ they chorused, " _It's a hard--it's a hard-- and it's a hard--It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall_.'" 

Yes, indeed, the universe had a sense of humor, Luke thought, as the two of them dissolved into giggles and the little uneti cuttings whistled in harmony and approval from their trays. Who would have ever guessed that he and Mara would ever be reconciled, or that she loved him, and he loved her, and all was right with the universe? Compared to that miracle, a hidden spring in the desert inhabited by sentient trees and other surprises from his long-dead mentor was downright ordinary in comparison. 

And who would have thought he'd ever look forward to the rain again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone / Yet many a man is making friends with death even as I speak, for lack of love alone' is from a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay. 
> 
> The hidden city carved out of the canyon is based on the ancient city of Petra, Jordan (which featured prominently in the latter third of _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ ). The passageway in and out is based on [the Siq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/siq), and the first building is based on [Al-Khazneh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Khazneh) (The Treasury Building). The aqueducts are also based [on Petra's irrigation system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PetraAqueduct.jpg), although the Tatooine version has closed pipes instead of open channels. 
> 
> Yoda's remark about "Know that what you do here, connected to everything else it is" is paraphrased from a fascicle by Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen. 
> 
> "These fragments have I shored against my ruin," is from T.S. Eliot's poem _The Waste Land_. 
> 
> Luke does use Callista's dust trick more successfully in _Planet of Twilight_ by Barbara Hambly. Also, the whole getting-the-Sand-People-drunk business really happened in _Children of the Jedi_ , by Barbara Hambly, more or less as I've described it here. Wild, right? 
> 
> Yes, Tor and Luke are singing Bob Dylan at the end. ;) Music plays such an important role in this story - see next chapter for the fic playlist. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone for taking the time out of their lives to read this fic - it's been a wild ride, and I'm so glad you've chosen to share it with me!


	8. Fic Playlist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a list of some of the music that thematically resonated with me while writing this fic, and where it fits into the text (in rough order of appearance).

1- [Opening Fanfare](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qDdYlyLRoI), 20th Century Fox  
2- [Star Wars - Main Title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk), John Williams  
3- [Stormy Weather, Ella Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezGHapF8-lY) [Tor's entrance, Chapter One] 

4- [Binary Sunset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDm-4Jrg9w), John Williams [Luke's Theme]  
5- [Nothing Can Be Explained](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Vw2_mAxzk), Shiro Sagisu [Depression Theme]

_I'm confused, a lot of it is hard to take, and 'cause of it,  
(everything's changed) I thought I'd make it through the pain_

6- [Blackheart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbttZVTSJRU), Two Steps from Hell [Mara's Theme]  
7- [Shipgate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAn3Lrfek60), Robyn Miller [Callista's Theme]  
8- [neoMAX](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iegvkAtL5aY), DM Ashura [Tor's Theme]  
9- [One Prairie Outpost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuNgDMdXAlM) \- Carbon Leaf [travel montage between Beggar's Canyon and Ben Kenobi's Hut, Chapter Five]

_Scene after scene passes by my life_  
_The window's a wound. The road is a knife_  
_The irony, ask me, 'where have you been?'_  
_I don't know, I don't know_  
_Because I don't know where to begin_

10 - [Horse With No Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSAJ0l4OBHM) \- America [Jundland Travel Montage I]

_On the first part of the journey_  
_I was looking at all the life_  
_There were plants and birds and rocks and things_  
_There was sand and hills and rings_

11 - [Desert Rose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lWwBslWqg) \- Sting, feat. Cheb Mami [Jundland Travel Montage II]

_And as she turns (away, away)_  
_This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams_  
_This fire burns (away, away)_  
_I realize that nothing's as it seems_

12- [The Canyon of the Crescent Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsKXJyfcDZM), John Williams [Discovering the lost city]  
13- [Secret Melody](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMV4ZC4AnA), Two Steps from Hell [Uneti/Reunion Theme]  
14- [A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5al0HmR4to), Bob Dylan [End Scene]  
15- [Whenever, Wherever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weRHyjj34ZE), Shakira [End Credits I]

_Thereover, hereunder_  
_You'll never have to wonder_  
_We can always play by ear_  
_But that's the deal my dear_

16 - [Star Wars End Credits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-6q8AVGyKU), John Williams [End Credits II]

**Author's Note:**

> Tor's opening lines are a slightly altered excerpt from the song "Stormy Weather", written in 1933 by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. There are a lot of different versions, but I personally love [Ella Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezGHapF8-lY)'s take on it. 
> 
> Tor's verses from "an obscure Sawarran poet" were written by Charles Baudelaire in our universe. I've used my translation here, but you can find the original French and several English versions of "Spleen (je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluveiux)" [here](https://fleursdumal.org/poem/160). 
> 
> Luke and Tor's chant ("Vast is the power of the Force") is a modified version of the Robe Chant used in some schools of Zen Buddhism. It is said before the wearer puts on their [rakusu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakusu), a modified form of traditional priests' robes. 
> 
> Callista's remark about Djinn Altis and the "'one thousand eighty major mistakes" is a direct quote from _Children of the Jedi_ by Barbara Hambly, as are the exchanges about "we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time" and "it isn't the Force in you I love". 
> 
> "The entry point is where you are" is a quotation from the poet Kabir.
> 
> Further ramblings, reflections, and meta [here](https://atamascolily.dreamwidth.org/4635.html).


End file.
